The Escapee Of Azkaban
Turns out there were a lot of Death Eaters, that hadn't died before the attack on Malfoy manor. Not as many as before of course, but still enough to worsen Draco's headache at every new name he discovered.
It also turned out, people were able to brake out of Azkaban.
Who knew? Not Draco.
But his mother's cousin seemed to know. Since he had been the one to attempt and succeed in it.
Sirius Black, the first Escapee of Azkaban.
It was weird to look at a picture of a relative in the paper, that wasn’t an announcement of great achievements. Especially when you had never even known about that relative.
Of course Draco had heard of the black-blothers. One more beautiful than the next. Charming their way through life with their black-family cheek bones and their raven hair. One disgraced, the other dead. One big tragedy those two.
But never had anyone really talked about them much other than small anecdotes they sometimes featured in. (“Look at you Draco, how you’ve grown. You definitely have your looks from your mother’s side. If it wasn’t for that hair, one could mistake you for one of the black-brothers!”) They had been a few years younger than his mother. A bit like little brothers, she had told Draco once when he was younger. He had always loved hearing stories about her childhood, since she only talked about it sparely.
Sirius had always been a troublemaker, called a 'disgrace' by his mother Walpurga Black, more often than her 'son'. Of course the guy had been a Gryffindor so Draco sort of understood that. Before Hogwarts, Draco had sometimes felt bad for his great-cousin. Crying himself to sleep at the though of turning out to be a disgrace just like him. Afraid the stupid sorting hat would put him in Gryffindor too. But at the end of the day, Draco didn't really know his great-cousin, and like his father always said, feeling bad for himself wasn't gonna change anything, so he had just made himself lose interest over time.
Regulus therewhile had been quite the opposit of his brother. A picture perfect son, ready to safe the family name when his brother couldn't.
No one knew how he'd perrished, no one talked about it anyway, but of course it had been a great big loss to the house of black. Loosing another heir. The last male one at that. And as young as he had been too. Sixteen.
The old family portraits Narcissa had rescued from her childhood home had sometimes gushed about the brothers. Well more or less so. In the dungeons of their home Draco had once found a small portrait he had thought to be his aunt Bella. But she had been so much nicer. Much prettier too.
She had been unusually nice in comparison to the snarky remarks most portraits in Malfoy Manor threw about. She had gone on and on about Sirius and Reggie, how she dubbed the brothers. How they had been inseparable back when they were kids. How they had looked out for each other right up until the day they had grown apart quite so drastically. When Sirius had left.
Andromeda had been her name.
His mothers other sister.
But Everyone talked about her less than they ever did about Sirius. Had married a muggle or muggleborn, Draco wasn'tsure. Something shameful at least. So Draco didn't return for a long time afterwards. Too afraid of the consequences.
And once he did go back, the woman and her portrait had been gone.
In Malfoy Manor there had been a lot of talking about Sirius Black. Collegues and friends of his fathers were coming and going. Even his mother had joined them in the study a few times.
Draco had heard voices talking about how it was possible for Sirius to want his title as heir back, and the possible danger that put Draco in, given that he now held the title of heir for both the Black and Malfoy family. They had even advised Lucius to take Draco out of school, but Draco didn't quite believe that anyone would be stupid enough to try to kill him and then survive that encounter.
At least no one that had spend the last decade locked up, without knowledge of his disease. His father had told them something along the lines too. His parents knew that Draco was able to protect himself.
Of course spells and curses still hurt or effected Draco to some extend, but they never damaged him for long. Draco had quite the fast healing period and was sometimes even able to brake spells before they were lifted.
His skin reacted to any slicing spells more or less the same. His skin did rip, but there was not much blood, and any cut, however deep healed inhumanely quickly. Fire was a bit tricky of course. But no normal person just set someone on fire on the first meeting, -well no one but Seamus Finnigan perhaps - so Draco was pretty sure he was safe from any possible attack from the Prisoner of Azkaban.
Harry Potter on the other hand seemed to be not quite as safe though.
A pity.
Well when Potter died, Draco would just have to share a potions table with Pansy then. There could be worse things (however, not many).
-
At the end of the summer, Draco had learned a few things.
1.Old books written by or over vampires before the 18th Century, were the most boring pieces of literature to ever exist. What even was this language? Not English for sure.
2. Draco now had a working theory about which group was most likely the source of the vampire attack.
3. It had to have been a planned attack. No normal Vampire saw a heavily guarded mansion from the forest and thought to hurry after the three meagre hearts thumping inside, when there was a whole village on the other side of the woods.
4. The person responsible was most likely a Death Eater or close to one. Draco was already half way through the names off all the ones that had survived till now. However, So far no name had stood out to him.
And 5. Slicked back hair really didn't do anything for Draco and if he didn't want to die alone he would have to change that.
--
A quick makeover, and a thousand hugs and kisses from his parents later,
-not because of the hair, they didn't really care about that. Though his father had loocked a bit hurt when Draco had told him he would cut it -
Draco sat anew in his favorite compartment in the back of the Hogwarts Express. Surrounded by his friends and Lackey's, Draco was ready to beat them all in every round of exploding snap till they got to hogsmeade station.
If he was honest, Draco was the most excited about his third year. This year he could finally elect extra classes to his liking and he had already done the extra reading their teachers had provided to them for all of the new subjects.
What he was looking forward to the most had to be Care of Magical Creatures. Of course he had partially taken it since he himself was somewhat of a magical creature, (vampires were of course classified beings, though some parts of wizard-kind didn’t see it that way) but he was also very interest in his fellow animals.
Draco had always had a thing for fairytales as well as myths about magical animals from ancient greek or roman times. Dragons were at the top of that list, of course. But others, he had only ever tasted the blood of, seemed rather interesting to him as well.
-magical blood tasted different than the normal kind. It also made Draco by far magically stronger. Sometimes the magic tasted a bit bitter though, although, Draco was unsure why.-
As a second elective, Draco had decided on Ancient Runes. Severus had taken the subject when he'd gone to school, and Draco had read about Runes that could influence the senses. A possible way perhaps for him to not always go out of his way to charm himself stupid before stepping outside or into larger crowds.
It would also be possibly easier to uphold Runes than it was to uphold spell. With the right ink runes could even withstand an entire summer. So no more hiding away until he could finally use his magic outside school.
Theo and Blaise had sadly not taken the same electivs, going with Arithmancy and Divination, but dumb and dumber would be there to keep Draco company so it was all right.
Draco wanted to concentrate on the classes anyway. If he wanted to overpower another vampire someday, he had to do the work for it.
His mother had told him that his great cousin Sirius had a few runes tattooed himself, when Draco had asked about the picture in the daily planet. If Draco was able to tattoo some of them then he would finally be set. He would almost be able to live normally if he wanted.
So Ancient Runes seemed like a good enough opportunity to better his knowledge and potentially a way to help Draco with his 'bloody little problem'. At least in theory.
The story about Black had made quite the rounds. Even in their little wagon, the Escapee had been quite the conversation topic. Theo was a bit scared of any possible appearances at Hogwarts, but Blaise had assured him that if the guy was going to go after anyone it wasn't them but Harry Potter. The man was Potters godfather after all. And the person who had rat out his parents to the dark lord back then.
Though, that little story about Sirius betraying the Potters seemed a bit odd to Draco. Why then was Sirius still so hated in his family's circle if he had helped the dark lord in the end? Why was everyone hating on him if he had done such an honerable thing of killing a bunch of Muggles?
Something didn't add up.
Why would the guy have traded in his own family for the Potters, only to then get them killed anyway?
This whole ordeal seemed rather strange. Maybe he was to ask Severus about it. He'd gone to school with Black and Potter hadn't he? Surely he knew something.
Either way, Draco was unbelievably excited for this year to start. Surrounded by the ones closest to him, he was ready to embark on yet another year’s journey.