Chapter Text
Looking back, he should have seen the signs.
“It’s that Mudblood. Avada Kedavra!”
Even hearing that word shook Draco to his core. He hadn’t uttered it since the Astronomy Tower. Now, the word echoed throughout the Room of Hidden Things.
His next action had been a reflex.
As soon as the curse had left Crabbe’s tongue, Draco cast a protective spell. She dived aside, though it wouldn’t have been fast enough. An invisible barrier consumed the deadly green light before it claimed its intended victim.
Draco didn’t have enough time to think about the significance of his impulse. A heartbeat later, Potter shot a Stunning Spell. Crabbe lurched out of its path and knocked into Draco, causing his mother’s wand to fall from his hand and roll out of sight.
Four years had passed since then: one awaiting sentence at the Manor, three in Azkaban. While Dementors no longer served as guards, Azkaban was still a freezing fortress in the middle of the North Sea that devoid all prisoners of warmth. Or so Draco was told. The howling winds never bothered him. Nor the supposed chill emitting from the stone walls.
He hadn’t felt cold since a lick of Fiendfyre scarred his flesh.
Scars littered Draco’s body. His once unmarred, pale skin had long ago been tainted with the thin white lines of a near-death moment and the putrid black curl of a sorely-regretted decision. He recoiled whenever he spotted either one. But the same was not the case for this other scar: a single stretch that began just above his wrist and curved up towards his pinky before dipping down again for a quarter-inch. He should detest the mark—a visual reminder of the flame that had taken his friend’s life. Yet Draco did not.
In the dark days of a damp cell, it served as an internal beacon. His fingertip’s trace along its outline would warm him like sipping hot butterbeer in front of a roaring fire. It was his shield. His sanity. Instead of succumbing to the mental strains of three years’ imprisonment, that scar provided hope. The cursed flames had killed Crabbe, but they had spared Draco. If he could survive that, then he could survive this as well.
~*~*~
It was odd returning to the regular wizarding world. House arrest had kept Draco away from the changes that occurred following the war: the shops on Diagon Alley had all reopened; Dark Magic no longer deterred the common witch or wizard from shopping on Knockturn; people smiled again. But Draco didn’t have time to explore. He had a reason for Flooing into the heart of Wizarding London.
Dragonhide leather met pavement as his feet led him to the dingy Muggle street where a broken-down red telephone box stood out against the shabby offices and graffiti-covered walls. He pressed the five-number combination, and the telephone box lowered him into the depths of the Ministry of Magic.
Given the choice, Draco wouldn’t have stepped foot back inside the establishment. He’d spent more than enough time in those level ten courtrooms to sufficiently fill a lifetime. But if he wanted his Hawthorn wand returned—which he very much did—then he needed to retrieve it from the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.
The rickety lift stopped at level two, and Draco stalled a single step into the department. The space was sweltering. Granted, it had been hot outside—by London summer standards, at least—but the Ministry was underground. The sun shouldn’t affect them down here. And yet, Draco had to resist the urge to free one button from his robes’ collar.
He stiffened as a sea of Ministry drones stared in his direction. No doubt they had all been warned that today was the day the infamous Draco Malfoy would be arriving to retrieve his wand. He paid them little mind as he strode across the grey carpets worn from foot traffic. With each move closer to the department’s front desk, the heat intensified, like rays of sunlight bore directly into him. Draco kept his gaze forward. He refused to let them think he was impacted by their spiteful looks, nor the immature Heat Hex one of them must have cast to make his insides ignite more than they naturally did.
“Draco Malfoy?” the front desk witch asked.
He withheld a scoff. As if anyone else with white-blond hair would warrant such glares. Unless they expected his father to be released any time soon, the question was a waste of both their time.
Draco nodded anyway. Petulance would only keep him there longer.
She set a thin, long box on the desk, along with a few other personal effects that had been taken prior to his sentence. Despite being left-handed, Draco reached for them with his right, keeping his scarred hand out of sight from the on-lookers. He returned his grandfather Abraxas’ watch to his pocket, then pulled his left hand out for a sliver of a second to slide the Malfoy signet ring onto the proper finger. He had nearly gripped the box containing his wand when the front desk witch pushed forward a parchment and quill.
“Upon reclaiming your wand, you hereby agree to bi-weekly check-ins with a Parole Auror to examine your magical usage and general behaviour in society. Your signature is required below.”
Fuck the Ministry of Magic. Draco should have known they wouldn’t let him live his life normally. Was three years in Azkaban not enough punishment? He hadn’t even killed anyone. He just had the great misfortune of being a Malfoy in a society that saw that name as synonymous with evil.
Beads of sweat formed on the edge of Draco’s hairline. The Heat Hex was excruciatingly effective. His extremities prickled with warmth while his robes clung to his skin. If he still submitted to the practices his father had instilled, Draco would have demanded to know who had done this to him. Marched up to each Ministry employee with the threat of termination until one of them confessed. But Draco didn’t want to cause a scene. He wanted his wand. He wanted to leave.
Suddenly, a new gaze burned into him. Even before seeing it, the stare set his entire body aflame like a well-aimed Incendio.
Draco shifted and found one of the previously closed office doors now open. His gut wrenched. In its frame stood a witch he hadn’t seen in four years but whose face was torched into his nightmares. She appeared just as curious as ever, though the wariness was new. While locked away, hardly a day had passed where Draco hadn’t thought of her. Of the ways he had wronged her. Of how he hadn’t been able to stop her screams.
At least she was still breathing. He had managed one decent deed in his life.
“Your signature, please.”
Draco ignored the fire scorching his skin as he seized the quill and signed his name along the designated line. As long as he could get his wand and leave this tortuous temperature, he’d agree to near anything.
The air didn’t clear until Draco was in the lifts and headed back to the Atrium. He clenched his hand around the Hawthorn wand’s familiar handle for the first time since he had lost it to Potter. Magic hummed through his veins, but Draco couldn’t relish the reunion. Behind shut eyelids, all he could see was the molten stare of Hermione Granger.
There was little chance he would have a restful night’s sleep.
~*~*~
Every second and fourth Thursday of the month, Draco endured the Ministry, though he was never sufficiently prepared. Without fail, a broiling blaze welcomed him the moment he stepped through the lift’s wrought golden grilles as if they were the gates into a hellish inferno. He tried everything: Cooling Charms, Fever-Reducing Potions, entire sticks of Muggle deodorant. He chugged glasses of ice water before coming and strapped ice packs underneath his robes. Nothing tempered the heat.
While the gritted snarls and stone-cold stares no longer greeted him, whoever thought it fitting to inflict Draco with such temperamental torment hadn’t relented. Yet Draco continued to enter the Department of Magical Law Enforcement as if nothing were amiss. He wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of seeing him break.
The first sixty seconds were the worst. Each stride sent shocks of searing warmth through his system as his mind turned feverish. He focused on his footsteps: one foot forward, then the other. As soon as he took thirty-seven paces, the heat would start to break. It always did. Right after he passed the front desk, just as he turned to proceed down the corridor toward the Parole Auror offices.
That spot also happened to be the one closest to a particular witch’s office.
Outside her door read a placard: “Deputy Head of Magical Law Enforcement.” Draco wasn’t surprised. It would have been more surprising if she hadn’t risen through the Ministry ranks so quickly.
It must have been a busy job; he hadn’t seen her since that initial visit.
Mundanity prevailed through Draco’s meetings as Parole Auror Leiman asked the same routine questions week after week. Did he have any interactions with other former Death Eaters? No. Had he performed any Dark Magic? No. Was he still having nightmares? Yes.
Perhaps if his head wasn’t stuck in a feverish fog, Draco would have been able to avoid that final truth. That answer had gotten him trapped into seeing a Mind Healer on the off-Thursdays he wasn’t stuck with this inane interrogation.
Summer slipped into fall, and soon winter hit. Still, Draco wore his lightweight robes to every parole obligation. The thin, forest green linen provided moderate comfort against the perpetual firestorm that fueled underneath.
Until one day, mid-January, it changed.
The lift approached level two, and Draco savoured one last unaffected breath. Except, when the voice announced their arrival at the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, something was different. Something was off.
He breathed again.
The stifling suffocation of dense, hot air was gone.
The grilles closed behind Draco as his footing faltered. After six insufferable months, his tormentor had finally decided to cease the Heat Hex. Draco could amble to his meeting without feeling like he was inches from the sun.
For the first time, he could clearly think during his meeting. Leiman wasn’t half as unbearable—though that still didn’t make their conversation pleasant. The questions remained dull, but Draco could breathe. He mindlessly traced the scar on his left hand, enjoying the rush of warmth with which he chose to flood his body. When he reentered the lift, there was almost, almost a smile on his face.
It didn’t last long.
The lift lowered one level. Two.
A third.
The grille opened.
Draco pulled at his robes’ collar.
“Level five, Department of International Magical Cooperation.”
A few people filed out.
One stepped in.
White hot flames swelled inside Draco as if a dragon was burning him from his core. The heat was blinding. He couldn’t think. Couldn’t concentrate. Couldn’t maintain his hold on the rope hanging overhead as the lift lurched back to life.
At the sudden momentum, Draco stumbled sideways, just as someone’s hand wrapped around his wrist for their own stability. The pressure was intense. Desperate.
Cold.
A steady stream of contented cool travelled through his veins, stemming from the point of contact and spreading from that touch. It was like stepping under a waterfall after a decade in the desert. Draco didn’t realise just how hot his body had been operating the past four years until the fire dissipated and his vision cleared.
Only then did he get a glimpse of the witch holding on to him as if he was her lifeline. The shock froze his heart.
Granger let go of his wrist, the same shock chilling her stare. Not a second later, the scorching heat returned, incinerating any reaction Draco may have been able to manage otherwise.
The lift’s announcement of the next level broke his fog, and Draco staggered through the grilles and onto the tile floor. He didn’t care that it wasn’t the Atrium; anywhere was better than that lift with Granger.
In the clarity of her absence, Draco could think again. But something was different—not just that he could breathe.
Draco reached for his wrist where she had touched. Even after the imprint of her thin fingers finally faded, that part of his flesh remained cool.
~*~*~
Winter’s snow melted, and leaves slowly sprouted from the trees’ bare branches. According to his Mind Healer, Draco had made significant progress the past few months. Draco wasn’t convinced.
While the nightmares had vanished, he wasn’t sure he preferred the alternative. His nightmares had grown predictable. Piercing red eyes, flashes of green. The tumble of one body over the edge of the Astronomy Tower, the collapse of another onto the Manor’s formal dining room table. Screams. So many screams. Her screams. After four years of the same memories plaguing his slumber, he had grown accustomed to jolting awake, drenched in hot sweat. He had never been sure which to blame more: the terrible nightmares or his internal thermometer.
Draco was now three months nightmare-free. His Mind Healer called it a success. A breakthrough. Supposedly, Draco was learning to forgive himself and move on with his life. He didn’t tell his Mind Healer that the nightmares stopped the same day she touched him.
Every other week, Draco checked her door. Every single time, it was open. Every stolen glance, she was never inside.
Ministry level two remained temperate.
Research filled the rest of Draco’s weeks. He read every text, tome, and title that had ever been published about Fiendfyre. He studied its properties. Its origins. How fiery beasts formed in its abyss and sentient flames strove to consume anything in its path. There were no recorded accounts of anyone surviving its burns, let alone someone who felt its lingering scorch four years later.
At night, he slept to visions of her pacifying touch. In the morning, he woke in a puddle of sweat.
~*~*~
Draco didn’t know how his Mind Healer convinced him this was a good idea.
“It might give you closure.”
Standing outside the Hogwarts Great Hall, it only gave Draco anxiety.
Rumbles of conversations echoed from the opposite side of the double doors. Anyone who had fought in the final battle had been invited back to commemorate its fifth anniversary. Well, not anyone. Typically, one did not invite the enemy to such gatherings. And yet, here Draco was.
He still didn’t understand how his name had made the list. It made sense that his mother had received an invite; Narcissa Malfoy had actively aided their cause, despite doing so for selfish motives. But Draco had been passive at best—assuming one gave him credit for not outright identifying his captured classmates. That felt insignificant compared to the branded serpent still twisting up his forearm.
Draco dragged the back of his hand across his perspiring brow. He may be the sole Death Eater in an impending flock of Phoenixes, but he sure as hell burned like one. An unsettling feeling warned him what the return of that internal fire meant. His research hadn’t provided confirmation, but instincts spoke louder. And there was a snowball’s chance in a dragon’s lair that she hadn’t come.
He stared at the closed doors for at least ten minutes, debating whether he should enter. It was a big enough step for Draco to even return to these grounds. They were better off celebrating their victory without the reminder of their classmate who had fought for the other side.
The conversations dwindled, and Draco knew whatever ceremony they were holding had begun. Yet Draco still didn’t enter. Instead, he turned on his heel and headed to the Grand Staircase, not certain where his feet led him, but positive he needed distance from his previous spot. A few students passed him, likely first or second years based on their size. Too young to have been at Hogwarts when it happened. Perhaps too young to remember much of the war at all.
If he stopped to think where he was going, he’d have to also think about why. So Draco kept walking. Not down the stairs to the familiar dungeons. Up. He only realised where he had gone when his feet instinctively started pacing in front of the tapestry depicting Barnabas the Barmy.
He could pace for hours, but in his gut, he knew nothing would occur. The Room of Requirement had been destroyed five years ago to the day.
The stone wall was rough against Draco’s back as he slid down its length and settled onto the floor. He stared at the blank expanse where an entrance used to appear, then clamped his eyes closed, thumb rubbing over the scar. He let the warmth consume him, just like it had that fateful night.
The moment they had escaped the Fiendfyre, Draco had fallen off Potter’s broom, lungs wheezing to rid themselves of smoke. A myriad of emotions had battled for prominence. Relief that he was still breathing. Annoyance that Potter had been the one to save him. Frustration that he had lost his mother’s wand. Grief that Crabbe was dead.
And hot. He distinctly remembered feeling hot.
His brain didn’t have enough capacity to think much of it then. Even if it did, Draco would have dismissed the sensation as Fiendfyre charring the Room of Hidden Things. Hours later, he still didn’t consider it significant when a budding warmth swelled inside his chest while he sat wedged between his parents as they grappled with the first minutes of post-war peace. It wasn’t until they were escorted to the Ministry for initial questioning that Draco noticed the lingering heat and his new scar.
He squeezed his eyelids tighter as the flames roared inside of him, steadily growing hotter, hotter, hotter.
“I wasn’t sure you’d come.”
The words bounced off the walls, and Draco startled to his feet, discovering a witch standing at the end of the corridor.
Not just any witch. Granger.
His pulse thrummed at her presence. Twenty feet away and he could still feel the burning buzz beneath his skin.
He held his head high, unsuccessfully willing the wildfire to wane. “Am I correct to conclude I have you to credit for my invitation?”
Even from a distance, he saw her chest inflate upon a deep inhale. “I needed an excuse for us to see each other outside of the Ministry. I was curious if...”
She took a step forward, and Draco instinctively stepped back, feeling his face flush. A trickle of sweat dripped from his forehead.
Her eyes illuminated. “So you do also feel it.”
Draco blinked at her incredulously.
Also?
Granger ran both palms down the fabric of her scarlet dress then paced forward again. Shock kept Draco rooted in place, frozen despite the surging swelter.
“That day you got your wand— I thought a fire had broken out in the department,” she said, seeming to become equally uncomfortable as she grew closer. “I’m not unaccustomed to random bursts of heat, but that day felt… different."
The walls of Draco’s throat were tight while his stomach flipped. “I thought I was the only one.”
“I did, too, until the lift.”
Draco twisted his grip around his left wrist—the one she had touched. For three days it had been cool, only to revert back to the typical heat that flared his flesh. While he figured the reaction significant, he hadn’t found any research to explain why she had affected him so. Part of him had started to wonder if he had imagined his skin ever feeling cool. The whole incident had felt like a fever dream. He could have deluded himself into thinking something had actually come of it.
Yet Draco found that hard to believe. After five years, he wasn’t sure his brain could fantasise a cold like that. Draco was too intimate with heat. His thumb grazed upward, finding the delicate curve of his Fiendfyre scar.
He had scarcely touched it when a sharp breath cut through the corridor.
“Malfoy,” Granger stammered through a gasp, eyes blown wide. She clasped a hand over her chest. “What did you just— Did you feel that?”
He furrowed his sweating brow. “Of course I felt it. It’s my scar,” Draco stated, feeling suddenly defensive. But the moment his snap retort left his lips and he processed her stunned expression, he realised something else. “You felt something?”
“It’s like someone’s taken Bluebell Flames and trapped them inside of me.”
Draco’s mind worked to comprehend. But that didn’t make sense. How could she possibly feel something that scarred his body?
His gaze flitted to the blank wall beside them where the Room of Requirement once materialised.
“It burned you too.”
Her posture stiffened, words suddenly tight. “My ankle. While we were escaping.”
The air between them was thick, even when she remained a good ten feet away. With the way flames tore through Draco, she might as well be standing directly next to him.
“So we both survived,” he said through heavy lungs. “How?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed, the first time Draco recalled ever hearing Granger admit to not knowing something. “I’ve been researching it for years, but information on Fiendfyre is limited when hardly anyone dares to experiment with it. The Healers at St. Mungo’s hypothesised that I was spared because the flames mostly burned my jeans, not my actual skin, but that doesn’t explain my mark.”
“Your mark?”
“On my ankle.”
Draco tensed. “Have you ever— touched it?”
“I don’t make a habit out of randomly touching my ankles.”
The coil in his stomach tightened. “Try it.”
Granger’s eyebrows knitted together, but she listened anyway. She crouched down, dropping her hand to brush against her ankle, and immediately, the same ripple she must have felt when he touched his scar pulsed through Draco. It started in his chest, like a match finding friction, then caught fire in the fuel of his veins. The heat was more overwhelming than whenever Draco initiated it. For the entire time it flared inside him, it was all he could focus on.
When the fire dimmed to its usual glow, Draco stared at Granger in disbelief. How many countless times had he stirred this similar fire in her over the past five years? Yet a more pressing question danced on the tip of his tongue.
“Why?”
She shifted uncomfortably, cheeks adorned with a fervid flush. “I don’t know that either.”
Silence mingled with the stifling air as they continued to stare at each other from across their gap. They had more questions than answers, but one thing was becoming undeniable: somehow, for whatever reason, their magical cores were linked.
Draco shivered at the thought. He doubted anything good would come from this.