Un-Mate

Draco Malfoy was not okay.

Sitting in the sexual health ward of the St Mungo’s hospital he could honestly say that this day was the worst he’d had in the several weeks since Voldemort had been defeated.

Draco also understood the childishness and petulance of that statement as his fingers crumpled the edges of the paper in his hands.

Name: Draco Lucius Malfoy

Primary Sex: Male

Secondary Sex: Omega

Status: Unmated

Draco felt a tightness in his throat as the paper softly shook, his head thrumming with the desperate need to dispel the disorientating and overwhelming fear from those printed words. Pursing his lips though, he remained silent as his mother sat beside him quietly.

Draco had known of course, on some instinctual level, he’d known, but the denial was so strong and thick that he’d pressed down on the information until it’d fallen apart under the stress of everything else.

A delayed onset. That’s what they’d called it when he was admitted for pre-mature heat symptoms. At 18 he was definitely late to present but they’d been advised that there had been flurry of admissions following the end of the war; he apparently had not been the only one delayed by stress.

There were pamphlets pinned to the wall beside him. Whether they had specifically sat him next to the Omega ones, he wasn’t sure, but his eyes burnt with the need to keep them averted at all costs.

“Draco,” said his mother softly, laying one gentle hand onto his as the paper started to tear down the middle from the excessive shaking of his hands, “Draco darling, it’ll be alright. There are many pureblood Alphas we can look at for suitable marriage options and there is much better response to Omegas in society now than there was even in my school days. You will be alright.”

The words were meant to soothe him, but they just created an abyss of ache that echoed in his chest over and over until he realised that the ache he was feeling was the burn of his lungs gasping for air. Wet streaks fell unfettered down his cheeks as he felt himself be pushed forward by soft hands, arms scrunched uncomfortable under his torso as his ragged hacking resulted in less and less oxygen. Draco felt the drip of the mucus at the tip of his nose, the warmth of his tears and watched through hazy vision as a small stream of saliva dripped from his gaping, open mouth onto the floor.

He hadn’t realised that the sound he could hear was himself. A wail of destruction that rendered him barely able to breathe, an echoing of the scream that had caught in his throat that he hadn’t known he’d released.

It tore through him; it all tore through him.

Omega. Lesser. Hunted. Owned.

He held no suspended belief on what this would mean for him. A target already painted on his back in black now felt wet and thick and sticky as it seeped with blood, a bright red, obvious and disadvantageous mark of vulnerability.

Omega.

The word choked him as he continued to scream.

*****

It was several days later when the letter came.

Sealed with wax as always, the proud print of the Hogwarts crest embedded in it, holding together the simple but thick paper that Draco sat flipping over and over again in his hands.

His mother sat at the other end of the long table. She was diligently ignoring his scowl, just as she had been the past few days. There had been a buzz of tension between them ever since Draco’s breakdown at St Mungo’s and it was obvious that Narcissa did not know what to do with her son.

Discussions of his future had come up several times since the discovery, Narcissa trying to wring out some sort of information about what sort of Alpha Draco might like.

“Male or female?” she’d asked.

“Does it matter?” he’d responded blankly.

“I would want to know you are happy in your union Draco,” she’d replied simply.

“Unfortunately mother, I think the chance of that was squandered away years ago,” he’d stated.

The room had grown silent after the exchange and had stayed that way for every subsequent meal they’d shared together. Narcissa didn’t understand and Draco didn’t blame her, but he also didn’t know where to put down the simmering rage that was sitting in his chest. He didn’t want to finish his schooling simply to be married off. He didn’t want someone to own him and tell him what to do. He didn’t want to be under anyone’s thumb or in anyone’s debt or tied to anyone ever again.

He'd seen what loyalty had done to his family, to his mother and to him.

Draco wanted freedom. He wanted to shed his last name and his skin and everything that came with it. He wanted to remove every essence of who he was and make himself unrecognisable or just make it so that no one could see through him to the mistakes of his family or the legacy that they still tried to claim to.

He wanted to be a whole person without ideas attached; without a future driven by others for him.

But Draco didn’t know how to say that, so he stayed silent instead.

“Are you going to open the letter darling?” asked Narcissa softly, her eyes breaching up from her dinner for the first time that night to catch Draco’s in a purposeful stare.

“We both already know what it says,” said Draco quietly, his words barely carrying over the table.

“Returning to Hogwarts is the most ideal situation for you at the moment. It might give you more stability to return to a familiar place. I’m sure there are also many of your classmates who will have further presented themselves. Perhaps an opportunity to find a match for yourself.”

The words bounced around in Draco’s head as she said them. Find a match. Find a mate. His teeth ached as they ground together, his fingers dropping the letter on top of the untouched plate of food in front of him.

“Please excuse me mother, I’m not feeling very well,” said Draco abruptly, the chair scrapping on the marble floor as he pushed it back harder than necessary.

It was the last push against Draco’s already crumbling psyche as he strode from the room. He ignored the parts of his childhood home that had been covered with sheets, or the way that some of the blood stains seemed to have become permanent, sinking into the porous flooring. He ignored the memories that etched themselves into an almost overlay in his senses, trapping him both in the present and in the past all at once. He ignored the voices all around him that never seemed to cease; incessant and demanding that he bend and break over and over and over…

Draco made it to his suite and slammed the door so hard it rattled the frame. His suite, the one he had given up residence to when the house had become Voldemort’s headquarters, had barely been returned to his former childhood memory. It was just as aged as he was from the year’s events.

Draco’s eyes landed on the box he’d bought. It was a muggle item. He’d escaped for half a day several weeks ago, sneaking into the muggle world, not for any particular reason but just to be anonymous for a moment. He’d wandered through their shops, picked up and inspected item after item after item, as if he could unravel their world well enough that he himself could step into it.

He hadn’t been able to make heads nor tails of anything really, but he’d understood the pictures and words on the front of the box. Hair dye. Black.

Picking it up with shaking hands he took in the deepest breath he could before looking up at the mirror in front of him. He’d attacked his hair the night before with some material scissors he’d found in the tailor’s room of the house. It now stood at odd angles and lengths, discordant to his controlled expression and well-dressed façade.

Ripping open the top of the box Draco pulled out the small leaflet and began to read.