Chapter 2
Draco was exceptionally focused on his current task when he heard his mothers heels on the dungeons stones, and her perfect hostess chatter as well. He looked up from his project to find his mother walking in with none other than The Boy Who Even Death Didn’t Want.
“Draco darling, Harry has come to see you about some business-“ she paused at the scene in front of her “and who is this other guest of my house that I was not introduced to?”
“Only someone who thought it would be a good idea to try to drug girls in our club mother, nobody worth knowing.”
Narcissa’s eyes narrowed at the man in the chair before quickly brightening back up again “very well, try to leave this one at least slightly alive please. You know Artemis prefers warm flesh to cold.”
“Yes mother” Draco was smart enough to know better than to argue with his mother. She had, after all, acclimated to the new normal of the manor quite quickly.
“My dragon, I was raised in The Ancient and Noble House of Black and married into the Ancient and Noble House of Malfoy, why you think you would need to hide this type of business from me is truly a question for the gods themselves.”
Draco sat and watched The Boy Who Wanted to be Lazarus himself just stare at the current going ons of the dungeon. In his defense, it was quite a scene.
“Nott, Pucey, why the fuck do you both have ‘juicy’ written across your asses?”
“Really Potter, that is the one thing you choose to open this insightful conversation with?” Not the half dead man sitting in front of Draco, not Theo and Adrian ‘inspecting’ the latest delivery from the Weasley twins, nor Blaise sitting in the corner smoking what the muggles call a blunt (Draco had of course already had his share prior to saint potters arrival).
Harry waved his hand “I survived a maniac trying to kill me from almost birth and have been best friends with Hermione since she set fire to Snape’s robes in first year.”
This piece of information had quite the reaction from the others in the room.
“She did what?” Adrian.
“I think I’m in love with her” Blaise (Draco nearly avada’d his best friend for that but knew he wasn’t serious).
“What a devious little savage, please Potter, do share more of Ms. Granger’s school time adventures,” Theo.
“Potter is a prat” the squeaky comment came from the Macaw currently resting on her post.
“Hush now Hera, this is much needed information” Theo responded.
“I told all of you, had she been anything but a muggle born she would have been sorted into Slytherin quicker than I was,” Draco said before continuing “so Potter, tell us why you’re really here.”
“Not to be insulted by a bloody bird that’s for sure” the boy with the mangled face said before continuing, “Hermione has received your message of dropping bodies and has finally agreed to a meeting.”
Draco straightened up at this news. His friends and his mother had been pushing him to just talk to her for years but he couldn’t. Everything she went through, every part he played in it, the witch she grew into. Powerful, dangerous, vicious, but still somehow holding tight to her compassion and ability to love. He needed to build himself up to her level before he approached her. The wizard he used to be wasn’t worth a second of Hermione Granger’s time.
Thankfully, the wizard he was raised to be knew how to keep his emotions in check and only replied with “when?”
“Saturday, at her club, be there at midnight.”
He nodded, turning back to his project to continue on but Potter stopped him “also, who is Artemis?”
“You were just promoted today, correct?” Blaise asked,Harry nodded “Then I promise you don’t want to know.”
“You’re not ready to know everything yet, Potter.”
“Pansy says the same damn thing ‘Potter do better, Potter you’re not ready, Potter what happened to you’ do you all share a brain or something?’”
Adrian snorted “no, we’re just wondering when the boy who survived death twice and killed the darkest wizard to ever Grace our history decided to become a pushover.”
“And protecting ourselves in the process, who knows when you’ll decide to stop playing nice and turn on all of us,” Draco added.
Harry rolled his eyes before walking out.
“Fuck off Potter,” Hera’s statement followed him out of the room.
Theo walked over to the bird crooning “that’s my good girl, you tell that mangy boy,” Hera preened at the praise and promptly put her head into Theos outstretched hand for scratches.
“You really should try to teach that bird something other than forever insulting Potter,” Blaise spoke up.
Theo, Adrian, and Draco all looked at Blaise in severe confusion at such a ridiculous statement.
Blaise rolled his eyes at his best friends before continuing, “one day that wizard is going to snap, and when he does he’s going to remember all the insults and the way he’s been treated. Look at what he did to Voldemort, after that he went on to be a successful auror, who do you think he’ll turn those deadly skills on when that day comes?”
“We just figured he’d finally go and properly fuck Pansy, Merlin knows they’ve been waiting long enough,” Adrian said with a shrug before walking to Theo and Hera and handing her a treat “good boy” immediately followed.
“Now where could she have possibly learned that phrase Theo?” Draco asked with a raised brow.
“A gentleman never kisses and tells” Theo actually turned his nose up at his friend.
Laughter was had between all, broken by a croaking voice asking “who’s Pansy?”
The croaking voice was turned into gurgled sobs when Draco relieved the offending mouth of its tongue and told the man “You do not get to speak her name.”
“You keep cutting parts off of him and Artemis will have nothing left, you know how she despises you restricting her diet like that.”
Draco thought of his dragon outside waiting in the garden, as an antipodean opaleye she was fairly docile for a dragon, but that would change when it came to her food. Deciding he didn’t care to deal with a dragon sized tantrum today he nodded and put down his tools. “Right” he said as he stood “I think this chap here has had enough fun anyway, let’s get him up so he can meet Artemis properly.”
The four wizards walked out to the gardens, Draco cleaning the blood off himself, Theo and Adrian making sure the guest hit his head on as many surfaces as he could on the way out, and Blaise carrying Hera on his shoulder.
Once they reached the outside they found Narcissa sitting on her favorite bench with Artemis curled around her as if she was an overgrown cat. Narcissa was talking to the dragon, probably sharing some gossip she heard at her last tea party. Gossiping was Narcissas favorite pastime after all, and Draco would swear to Salazar himself thay Artemis loved listening to it just as much.
Draco knew the moment his dragon smelled them coming for she unfurled herself, stretched languidly and then pounced (yes, dragons do pounce just like the overgrown cats they are) over to them. She stopped in front of Draco to push her head into his body and demand scratches, a low rumbling symbolizing her pleasure at the action, before peeking her head back up when the scent of blood finally hit her nostrils. She promptly dropped her front claws, raised her hind quarters, and began wiggling her tail back and forth.
“Theo, Adrian, drop the body and back up now,”
They barely had time to get out of the way before Artemis pounced and started digging into her snack. She would need to hunt later before she was properly fed but this would tide her over until it was dark enough thatDraco could take her out.
The others left the dragon to her meal while they spoke about the upcoming meeting. “What do you think Granger has planned for this meeting then? Do we need to be on guard?” Adrian asked.
Draco snorted “if she wanted us dead we already would be. No, no I think this is a legitimate meeting of the minds”
“You think she wants a team up?” Blaise asked incredulously.
Draco shrugged before “that’s my best guess. She doesn’t want us dead, if she didn’t care about what we are doing she would ignore us. Setting up this meeting shows genuine interest.”
“Interest in our Drakey and all the growth he’s done these past few years,” Theo added a very aggressive eyebrow wag to this.
Adrian cackled, Draco rolled his eyes and Blaise said “he’s not wrong mate, the work you’ve put in at the gym is clear. Not to mention you peppering that ghostly pale skin with as many tattoos as you can”
Draco almost preened at this praise, almost but not quite.
“Regardless, we will be walking into her territory so we all must be on our best behavior,” Draco said before looking at Theo and Adrian specifically “that means no fighting. Seriously you two. No. Fucking. Fighting.”
They looked at him with twin expressions of shock and confusion. Blaise added “and for the love of Merlin choose other outfits, and footwear. You both look ridiculous walking around like that.”
The two looked down at themselves, Theo in a purple Juicy suit with pink Ugg boots and Adrian in a pink Juicy suit with purple Ugg boots. “Pansy said this was the height of muggle fashion!” Adrian exclaimed.
Draco and Blaise couldn’t stop the laughs that exploded out of them, doubling over with them. Finally somewhat gathering themselves they stood straight, swiped the tears from their eyes, and Draco said “for muggle women you twats”
Adrian and Theo looked at each other before shrugging “we’re comfortable, and these pants really make our asses look phenomenal, I think we’ll keep them,” (in truth they all had asses you could bounce a galleon off of. Draco was a dictator when it came to their exercise regimen).
Draco just laughed once more before saying “let’s go you assholes, we need to stop at the club so that I’m back in time to take Artemis for her nightly flight.
Artemis was finished with her snack by then and came over to Draco to once again shove her head into his body, smearing blood from her maw all over him, and demanding more scratches before going back and curling herself around Narcissa again, waving her tail at them in fairwell.
Later, Draco found himself atop Artemis as they traipsed the English countryside in search of her nightly meal. He truly loved these moments, he always loved being in the air. As a child he was on a broom before he could walk, riding it every chance he could get. Graduating from a training broom to an adolescent sized one, and then the day he finally got to ride the Nimbus 2000. Had his father purchased the teams brooms to secure his spot? Of course he did, he was a Malfoy after all. But Draco did work his privileged ass off to stay on that team. He knew Flint only accepted the bribe on a probationary period. He still had to prove his place. and he did, for he so loved being on a broom.
Ever since Artemis was old enough to hold him and begin flight training that all changed. He still appreciated his broom, but there wasn’t anything in this universe or any other that could top the feeling of being atop a dragon. Not when both dragon and rider had complete trust in each other, not when it was as though Artemis could read his mind and knew what he wanted to do before he did.
Dragon riding was a life changing event, one that could rearrange your very soul. And the first time he climbed into the air with Artemis he hadn’t known that it would be just what his soul needed.
He had been deep into his depression when his mother came home with her egg “Mother where the fuck did you get a dragon egg? What the fuck are we going to do with it? What if the ministry catches us? What the fuck were you thinking?” Had been his response.
“I was thinking that I’m tired of watching my son destroy himself because of actions that were forced upon him as a child. I was thinking I’m tired of watching the light of my life dim everyday. I was thinking that I needed to make up for my own parts in it.”
“And you thought what, bringing home a Class-A Non-Tradeable egg would be the cure for all this?”
“No my dragon, I was thinking that bringing home a dragon of your own to raise would bring my boy back to me. Would remind you of your namesake, remind you of your strength, and pull you out of this dance with the veil you’re intent on and bring you fully back to the world of the living.”
And with that statement she spelled an unending fire in his fireplace, placed the egg inside, and walked away.
It had taken a week for Artemis to break her shell and join the world. And as soon as Draco took one look into her rainbow colored eyes he knew his mother had been right, he needed to fix himself for her. This majestic creature, this ancient and knowing being who crawled into his lap immediately after birth needed him.
From that moment forward Draco began his transformation. It started with putting down the Ogdens, actually eating his meals to gain back the weight he’d lost in the war and after. Then the workouts began, he sat with a muggle trainee a couple of times to decide on a routine, turned part of the dungeons onto his personal gym, and got to work. Blaise, Theo, and Adrian joined almost immediately. Artemis still being small enough in the beginning to run around the gym and attempt to distract them all from their regimens. Theo had decided early on that he needed his own familiar, the next day he came back with Hera. The rest of them had been fearful of what would happen with a dragon and a parrot in the same room but, hera just flew over to Artemis, perched on her head, and started calling all of them lazy fuckers.ust like that, the two beings were friends.
The tattoos had been a result of his inability to continue to look at the mark that bisected his arm. Everything that it represented brought bouts of nausea every time he glimpsed it. So it started with a hebredian black, across half of his back, over his shoulder, and the end of the tail covering the mark. And then on the other side he had Artemis placed, the dark and the light coexisting in peace on his skin. Those first two snowballed into him further covering the rest of his torso and going to work on his legs.
Even if Draco wasn’t an egotistical man, which he was (and had every right to be) he would still have to admit that he has turned himself into an exemplary model of what a wizard should look like.
Artemis diving interrupted his inner musings, she must have found her dinner. They raised back up with a cow between her jaws and he thought about the upcoming meeting. He had one chance to get this right, one chance to show Hermione Granger that not only was he deserving of her but that he would do literally anything to make her happy. After all, she was the reason he began his own little crime ring. His mother had told him of her escapades after every tea with her. Draco began by following in his fathers footsteps, thought he could bully his way through the ministry. He quickly realized just bullying would not be enough, the amount of corruption in there boggled even his jaded mind. It was no wonder Granger had left in the state that she did. It was no wonder she reverted to her savage school days and claimed her throne in the underground.
It had been easy for him to start dropping bodies, he was trained as a child soldier after all, and the ones he started with were the ones that spoke openly against Granger. It was as if the gods were lighting his path for him.
So he did what came naturally to him, he killed, bribed, threatened. The clubs had been Blaise’s idea, the drugs had been Theo’s and Adrian’s. He was hesitant on that one at first but as soon as the twins had told him they found a way to block the addiction in wizards he was on board. And so their little activities grew and spread at insane levels.
He was honestly amazed that it had taken this long for him to land on Granger's radar, normally she was very on top of the going ons in the underground.
Once again Artemis’s diving had interrupted his musings, her landing a bit rough due to her dinner in her mouth, her four ton body rocking his side to side as she settled.
He climbed off, gave her some goodnight scratches as she rumbled happily and headed inside for his nightly workout. It was still a few days away but he had a meeting to get ready for.