Monsters by Nightfall

The morning after their little sleepover, Draco felt weak. All the (k)energy drained from his body.

It hadn’t taken long for the arguing to reach up the stairs towards Draco’s room where the Potter heir had curled himself effectively around one of Draco’s legs and immobilized the Malfoy thereby.
After a solid minute of trying to escape, Draco finally separated himself from the monkey in his bed and sneaked down.
The voices belonged to a very agitated Sirius Black, an appeasing Arthur Weasley, and one very annoyed Lucius Malfoy.

Their discussion hadn’t been going on for long and seemed to already be over since Sirius Black suddenly stormed up the stairs, almost running Draco over. Black had only just stopped him from falling down by grabbing him on both shoulders, but instead of letting him go, he yelled into the young heir's face:
“Where is Harry? What have you done to him?”

Before Draco could respond there was another voice coming from the top of the staircase.
“Padfoot! Let Draco go.”
All eyes fell on the half-sleeping form of Potter. His shirt was a little crooked as if he had only just woken up, but his eyes were as certain as ever.
“What did they do to you?”
“Nothing!”
“As I’ve told you before Black!”
Lucius chimed in.
“They didn’t do anything wrong, Sirius. Draco helped me out of the woods when I got split up from Hermione and Ron. And the Aurors were after us, so I couldn’t have stayed there very well.”

“The Aurors?”
Black asked confused.
“That is what I was saying before, Sirius.”
Weasley finally found room to speak, making eyes travel towards the redhead.
“I’ve been sent here by the Ministry to question the boy.”
Now Weasley turned towards Potter.
“Harry, I made them send me since I know that you didn’t do it. You didn’t cast the dark mark, did you?”
Draco shifted uncomfortably in his place not far from Black and threw a glance at his father, who was listening animatedly. Did he know anything about the mark? Had the former death eaters cast it? No, he seemed too interested in that. He might’ve not looked the part, but Draco knew Lucius was listening animately to every word that was said.

“Of course, Harry didn’t, Arthur! This is preposterous. How would you even come to-“
“Let the boy speak!”
The weasel reprimanded.
Eyes flew up to Potter, who was, against all odds, looking at Draco. So almost on autopilot, Draco slowly nodded at Potter, in silent reassurance.
“I- I didn’t cast the mark.”
“And do you have any proof of that?”
Weasley asked uneasily as if he hated himself for speaking up against the ‘Boy Who Lived’, which he probably did.

“I was with him when it first appeared. He didn’t do it. He didn’t have his wand with him and by the way he would’ve never been able to cast it with his wand there either. Where should a 14-year-old get the spell from?”
Black eyed Draco up and down, sceptically.
“And what were you doing all alone in the woods?”

“What my son does or does not do, when and where is none of your concern Sirius.”
Narcissa Malfoy joined the conversation, stepping down the stairs, past Harry, to place herself behind her son, sending her husband an indecipherable look that carried a disappointment, only people that really knew her could discern.
She was wearing a long, Slytherin-green nightgown that made her appear beautiful yet stern.

“The mark, it was cast by my wand wasn’t it?”
Harry asked the question he already knew the answer to, only for Weasley to confirm it with a nod.
“The Aurors took a house elf into custody but-“
“A house elf casting the dark lord's mark? Who may the creature belong to?”
Lucius asked disbelieving.
“Barty Crouch’s house elf.”
A slimy smile threatened to spread over Lucius' face.
“We think that they were set under the Imperio curse, however.”
“Something you should have your experience with Lucius,”
Black shot towards the Malfoy patriarch, “Or not.”

Lucius' face was drawn into a tense grimace.
“Should we really debate who of us should be in Azkaban right now, Black?”
He spits back, taking a threatening step towards the past convict.

“Maybe your little son over there is about to follow in Daddy’s footsteps. What tells me that he didn’t cast that mark, trying to blame my godson? Or was he under the Imperio curse as well?”
Black's eyes were distorted. Filled with fire, and madness, created in the darkest pits of Azkaban. Even Lucius unconsciously took a step back under the intense glare.
“Stop it, Sirius! That’s enough.”

With such small words, the madness was gone, replaced by fear and regret. How had Potter suddenly gained so much power? So much confidence?
“Sorry Jame- Harry.”
There was hurt in Potter's eyes, but he still moved his eyes towards Arthur Weasley.
“Is that all?”
A nod from Weasley.
“Can we go home now?”
Another nod, now from Sirius.
And soon it was only the three of them, and the quote of Malfoy Manor.

-

The last few days after had been odd.
There were a lot of questions met with a lot of silence. Of course, if Draco had just flat out asked those questions,
(Do you know anything about the night I got bitten? Why are you still meeting up with the other former death eaters? What side would you pick if it was your son or the Dark Lord?)
instead of sulking and throwing his father disappointed glances when he wasn’t looking, maybe there would have been an explanation given. But Draco didn’t care about possibilities. For him, there was only certainty. And certain was, that his father didn’t care about him either way, so he wasn’t gonna answer questions anyway if Draco ever were to ask them.

And then there had been this weird change in Draco’s body as well. He was suddenly so tired all the time and even slept through most nights, where he had been able to go without sleep for weeks before.

And then there was this minimal desire for blood. Normally he drank it every other day, especially since he was growing a lot, now that he was a teenager. But suddenly the thought of it only grossed him out. Instead, he started eating normal food again. And it didn’t even taste disgusting.

And his hearing and smelling were all wonky as well.

Something was pretty fishy, but Draco couldn’t quite figure out the cause of all these changes.

Of course, Draco had suspected his new little tattoo at first, still engraved into the flesh of his arm.
But the day after the World Cup it had been gone. No trace of it. It had just healed right up.

Had the chosen one perhaps messed with his senses?
Cursed him somehow?
Maybe even cured him with all that light magic in his core?

In any case, Draco needed to stay away from him. If not for his family’s sake, then for his own. Potter's scent had been messing with his senses before, and Draco wasn’t gonna wait and see what other trouble Potter had in store for him.

-

Lucius Malfoy wasn’t there when Draco and his mother had started packing his stuff for the new school year - an annual tradition they had Implemented on the day before his first school year.

Neither had he been there for the floo towards Kings Cross station.
Nor for Draco and Narcissa’s genius evasion of the Potter-Blacks.

He hadn’t been there for the last goodbye. The last wave.
Until Narcissa was gone too and Draco was left to hide from Potter all alone.

He wasn’t in the mood for the leeches named Pansy, Vince, and Greg, who were surely sharing a compartment with his friends.
Therefore, Draco sneaked up to the first few compartments, where no one ever sat because the prefects normally resided there, and hid himself away with a simple disillusionment spell.

It didn’t take long, however, for Draco to get bored.

He had been going through some of the old prophet newspapers for a while, to perhaps find a trail he had missed before.
He wasn’t gonna give up his research.
Now more than ever was the time to finally figure out who was behind the attack on Malfoy Manor in 1986. Who had turned him? Who had perhaps orchestrated all of it?

However cross Draco was with his father right now, he couldn’t let the Malfoy patriarch trust someone who had betrayed him before.
Ironic, considering the lingering trust and compassion Draco still had for his father.

Another bad thing was, that Draco couldn’t really warn Lucius of his fellow Death Eaters either, without enough proof. He could, of course, make Lucius consider their worldview and whether he shared their values, but that hadn’t worked the night of the World Cup either, and Draco didn’t want to set himself up for failure all over again.

So instead of working himself mad over the same articles he had read more than a hundred times already, Draco got up to go search for his friends. Maybe they had ditched the leeches.
But just as he was on his way out of the hexed compartment, he suddenly picked up voices from the one behind him.

“But what does an Auror want at Hogwarts?”
The person speaking had a deeper voice, that was traveling through the thin wall nicely. Taking a curious step closer to the wall, Draco could make out another voice answering.

“Oh, Alistair Moody isn’t just any Auror, Cedric, he is the best of them all.”
Cedric? As in Cedric Diggory, the Hufflepuff Seeker? Wasn’t he a prefect too? So that must be one of the infamous Prefect compartments next to him.

There was laughing on the other side.
“You don’t believe me? He’s responsible for filling half of Azkaban with ‘You Know Who’s’ followers.”

Interesting. Draco hadn’t really looked at any of Dumbledore’s soldiers in the war yet.

“Do you mean Mad-Eye Moody?”
Another, a higher voice chimed in.
“Yes exactly!”
“Why’s he called Matt I Moody?”
“No, Mad eye! He wears some weird hexed prosthetic eye that goes crazy.”
“Yeah. My dad worked with him on a case once. He said Moody’s eye sees everything. It can rotate 360 degrees and it sees through anything, even the back of his own head.”
“So what, he has three eyes?”

There was more laughing.
“You’re pretty dense for a Ravenclaw, Markus. Careful or people will think you’re a Hufflepuff.”
That must’ve been the Slytherin prefect, who was immediately answered by the second Hufflepuff Prefect:
“Knock it off Bulstrode. We’re not dumb.”
“Yeah you tell yourself that.”
There was a bit more aggravated murmuring that Draco couldn’t understand. He almost went up to stand and leave again, when the voices got a lot clearer once more

“So, about his eyes?”
A voice urged. Markus Turner, the Ravenclaw prefect, Draco presumed.
“He lost one in a fight with a few death eaters.”
Someone answered.
“Pah, Not just any death eaters. I say it was Barty Crouch and his lot.”
Barty Crouch? The weird old guy from the Top Box?
“The judge?”
Exactly. Why would he fight an Auror, though?

“No, his son. Crouch Junior. Before he died in Azkaban he was part of You Know Who’s closest circle. Up there with Evan Rosier.”
Silence followed.

Curious.
Rosier and Crouch had come up in his research before, but Draco hadn’t looked into both of them too closely. They hadn’t seemed like higher-ups in the Dark Lords Circle. A group of foot soldiers perhaps. Farley powerful ones though, if what that prefect was saying was right.
One crazier than the other. He’d read more about their victims than them. But the names at least rang a bell. Crouch Jr. especially.

Suddenly the Crouch house elf sprang to mind again. Why had he carried Harry’s.. erm Potter’s wand? Had that elf summoned the dark mark by itself or had it been manipulated? Imperioed perhaps.

But why a house elf? Why Crouch’s?
Could Crouch be affiliated with the death eaters or had he been targeted?

He didn’t remember much about Rosier, other than his death in battle, fighting off Aurors even after the dark lord's demise. His family heritage had been interesting as well, considering the Rosier name, and the power it carried in History. Not only England, but their grand pure-blood family tree, carried into parts of France as well.

Draco seemed to recall the name from one of his old French vampire books as well.

“What? Have you never heard of them? But surely Regulus Black rings a bell?”
So they had been part of Blacks’ lot?
“Sirius Black's brother?”
There must have been extensive nodding.

“Yeah him. Rumour has it, that Moody killed Rosier in battle. And in revenge, Crouch and Black Blasted his eye out of its socket.”
“Fun times…”
“Gross!”
“But didn’t Moody lose his eye at the end of the first wizarding war? Because Regulus Black didn’t live to see the end, he couldn’t have helped that Rose guy fight Moody.”
Who’s dense now Bulstrode!”
There was chuckling.

“Markus is. It’s Rosier not Rose. Regulus Black went missing, but he didn’t die. Therefore, nobody knows whether he’s dead.”
Draco chuckled. A fun conspiracy, but most likely far from the truth. Bulstrode was just like her sister, making up facts to get out of situations.

Regulus Black could’ve never faked his own death. He had been powerful, yes, but surely not powerful enough to escape the Dark Lord. He would’ve found out and would’ve killed Black either way.

“But if this Mad Eye Moody is so good at his job then, surely, he has enough to do at the ministry. Why come to Hogwarts?”
“I’ve heard Albus Dumbledore himself asked him to come to teach DADA.”
“He’s not gonna last long anyway.”
“They never do.”