Chapter Text
At the back of The Three Broomsticks, a crowd of self-important boys in black robes occupied the corner table, their laughter hard and too loud against the pub’s low murmur.
Draco sat stiffly among them, his spine locked, trying to inhabit the broad shoulders of Abraxas Malfoy’s robes without drowning in them. He kept his chin tilted at the exact angle of effortless disdain his grandfather had pioneered, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his knees beneath the wood.
“For you, sir?”
The barmaid hovered, quill poised, gaze flickering from one boy to the next.
Draco didn't look up. "A butterbeer."
The word landed in the center of the table like a dead animal, cutting out the shrill laughter instantly. For a moment, the only sound was the barmaid’s quill scratching.
“Butterbeer?” This from the Rosier boy. “I thought Abraxas hated sweets. Has your mother’s passing softened your palate?”
Draco’s mouth twitched; he could not risk a smile. His skin had gone a shade paler than the wax dripping onto the tablecloth. The barmaid hurried away, perhaps sensing the tension that had just split the air. But it was Tom Riddle who spoke next, the subtle center of gravity around which this group now turned. Every other presence diminished, even the candles seemed to gutter in apology.
“Abraxas has been indulging in sweets on my advice, hasn’t he?” he said, gaze not leaving Malfoy. “Certain bloodlines, I’ve noticed… are prone to hypertension. A bit of sugar here and there keeps the pressure down, or so I’m told.”
The others digested this, visibly uncomfortable. It was absurd, of course. Even Draco felt the weight of its ridiculousness.
"Well, if it's for your health, Abraxas, then by all means," one of them conceded, a hint of resignation in his voice. Then, he gestured toward the drinks that had just arrived, “—Let’s not let Madam Rosmerta’s best go cold.”
No one spoke again of butterbeer. Draco cradled his mug in both hands and sipped, careful not to grimace. The thick foam coated his tongue, syrupy and vile. He felt watched, always, as though the woodgrain of the table had grown eyes. His companions were already half bored and more than half in love with themselves, these Knights; the talk was of girls, Quidditch, and the mild theater of ambition that asked nothing personal of anyone. He played along with their talk until the group finally split.
As Tom moved to leave, he lingered by Draco.
“Odd choice, Abraxas,” Tom smiled. When it came, it was so brief it might have been imagined. “I can’t recall seeing you drink anything sweet before. Ever.”
“Something new every day.” Draco looked into the foam and found a distorted version of the body that he had trespassed, Abraxas’ reflection. “So… why did you waste a lie on me just then?”
“You’ve changed,” Tom said.
“I’ve been tired.” Draco set the mug down, careful not to slosh the remaining beer.
Tom’s eyes — deep and unyielding, like twin pools of midnight — locked onto Draco's. And he leaned in, bridging the distance between them, so close that the clamor of the pub seemed to drop away.
“You’re not Abraxas, are you?”
-
The bathroom’s cold, damp air. The glint of Potter’s face twisted in horror. The white-hot agony that ripped through him when the curse struck, he remembered falling, the tile rushing up, his own breathing sounding wet and pathetic in the silence.
Red, too much red, spilling over the pale marble floor.
He could still hear the rhythmic taunt of the running taps and Potter’s frantic, uncoordinated whimpering. Then came the metallic sting on his tongue as his world narrowed to pain, and then to nothing at all. When he woke, it was to the weight of an unfamiliar bedcover and the smell of polished wood and burning coal. His body felt wrong, taller and broader across the shoulders. His hands, resting against the coverlet, were not the hands he knew — the fingers longer, the skin unlined but subtly different in hue.
He sat up and caught his reflection in the mirror across the room. Platinum hair, dressed in a cut of clothing that looked as if it had stepped out of a history book. Abraxas Malfoy, his grandfather, a man now lost to the ravages of dragon pox, the sorrowful news still fresh in the fabric of their family story. He was now staring at him with youthful, piercing eyes. And the folded newspaper at the bedside bore a date that placed him in a time long before his own existence
Bloody Potter. This was his fault. That half-baked, show-off spell Sectumsempra—that did nothing but slice him open—has landed him here, trapped in someone else's life and stuck in the wrong damned decade. When he finally makes it back in one piece, Potter had better watch his back. He’ll take that so-called chosen one's face and plaster it on his wall, hexing him every single morning without fail. He'll spend all day plotting out his torment for as long as he can manage; he might even cast a spell to turn his hair bright pink each day. He will—
This was their doing, every last bit of it.
And Granger. Self-righteous, insufferable Granger, who’d probably tut about the dangers of experimental magic and lecture him on “consequences.” And Weasley — thick as a troll and twice as loud — probably will grin like a complete idiot at the idea of Draco Malfoy stranded in the past.
“I see,” Tom’s voice snapped Draco out of his own thoughts. “Time travelling… and body swapping. An inconvenience for you, I’m sure.”
“Keep this secret between us, Riddle,” Draco said, twisting his wand between his fingers. “I only tell you because circumstances forced this on me. Whatever else you believe, I had no hand in your friend’s fate.”
“Indeed, Abraxas was a good friend to me,” Tom said softly, but so perfectly pitched it felt like he was speaking only for Draco’s ears. “Sharp mind. Uncompromising. I’ll miss him, but I know this isn’t your fault. And I do hope, wherever he is in your decade, he’s faring well.”
Draco swept the tousled hair out of his eyes. “He’d adapt. Malfoys always do.”
It was the safest response he could offer. Yet, he was wise enough not to buy into Tom Riddle’s twisted idea of “sympathy.” To Tom, people were merely pawns, easily cast aside when they were no longer useful. Draco couldn’t help but think that this monster wouldn’t bat an eye at what had happened to Abraxas.
A snake will shed its skin, but it never changes its fangs. Draco had learned that lesson firsthand, long before waking in Abraxas’s body. Voldemort — the name Riddle took when surrounded by the Knights of Walpurgis — had chosen him, a sixteen-year-old, to kill Dumbledore as a punishment. Punishment for Lucius’s failures at the Ministry, letting the prophecy slip away after the debacle in the Department of Mysteries.
The task had been a sentence disguised as a mission. Kill the greatest wizard alive, or die trying. Failure meant death. Success likely meant the same.
That year had hollowed him out. He had isolated himself from his housemates, stopped lingering in the Slytherin common room, and ignored the easy sneers and quips that had once come so naturally. He’d broken things off with Pansy without explanation. At home, his mother’s letters had grown shorter, the handwriting sharper. He could feel her fear between the lines. He knew she was walking a tightrope to keep him alive, bargaining with forces she despised.
The sudden jolt pulled Draco out of his thoughts. A shoulder collided with his, light but enough to make him turn sharply.
“Oh! I’m so sorry!” The voice was breathless, high, unmistakably familiar in a way that made the hair rise at the back of his neck. “Olive Hornby, she… she—”
Draco turned, and for a moment the din fell away. Myrtle. But alive, pink-cheeked, clutching a tower of books like it might topple her flat. Her eyes were round behind her thick spectacles, the same uncertain gaze he remembered.
He had first heard her name from his father, Myrtle Warren, who was dead when the Chamber was opened. But Draco came to know her in a different light—Myrtle, the wailing ghost haunting the girls’ bathroom, who hadn’t treated him like a leper or with pity during his sixth year. A Muggle-born, of all things. And somehow, she became his only friend during a time when the world seemed to have either turned against him or circled around him like vultures.
Her mouth opened, maybe to apologize again, but a hand caught Draco’s arm before he could say anything.
“Abraxas,” Tom leaned in, so only Draco could hear him, “would just walk past those filthy Mudbloods.”
It wasn’t a suggestion.
Draco swallowed whatever reply he might have had and let his expression settle into something cool, disinterested, letting his silence stand as agreement. He walked on, and Myrtle’s figure slipped behind them, swallowed by the swell of the crowd.
When they had gone far enough that her presence was no longer in sight, Tom’s tone shifted as though nothing had passed between them at all. “You told me your name is Draco, am I correct?”
“…Yes. Draco Malfoy.” Draco said.
“It’s an excellent name. Latin for dragon. Or, if you prefer etymological accuracy, from ancient Greek drakōn, meaning serpent.” He said the last word with deliberate weight, as though tasting it. “How fitting. Two creatures that inspire both awe and fear. Regal in their own ways.”
Draco made himself shrug. “It suits the family, I suppose.”
“It does more than suit it. It commands respect. A name like that—people remember it. It shapes the way they look at you, before you’ve even spoken.” Tom hummed; he didn’t rush the silence that followed. Instead, he let it stretch, as if weighing whether to speak at all. Then, with that same unhurried cadence, he continued. “You wear it well. Even with the hair, though, I will say you ought to let it down instead of slicking it back like usual. It gives the impression of someone unconventional. And I do like people who are unafraid of change.”
“I ran out of Sleekeazy,” Draco muttered before thinking.
“Then borrow mine,” Tom said without missing a beat. His smile was sudden and warm, almost brotherly. “We’re roommates. Practically family.”
Draco kept his gaze fixed ahead, saying nothing. He preferred to keep conversations brief, which would make it simpler to sever ties with the not-quite-seventeen-but-already-dangerous Voldemort.
“It’s strange,” Tom adjusted his pace to match his, as though they had all the time in the world, “you’re a Malfoy, but you don’t speak quite like Abraxas ever did. I’d like to know you better. Tell me… what’s your favorite subject?”
Draco frowned slightly, clearly caught off guard by how casual the question was. “…Why not something else? Like bloodline ideology?"
“Because,” Tom said, “you learn far more about a man by what excites his mind than what fills his pockets. Blood is only the foundation. The house you build on it—that is what matters.”
Draco almost snorted. That was rich, coming from the boy who preached blood purity, yet carried a Muggle’s surname and probed whether the stranger wearing Abraxas’s face was worth drawing closer. However, he also understood that by not responding, the scrutiny would follow.
“Defence Against the Dark Arts,” Draco said at last.
“Ah.” Tom’s eyes glinted in something almost admiring. “So you like the idea of danger and mastering it.”
Draco held his silence.
“That’s a fine thing,” Tom went on. “Most people hide their ambition. They bury it, ashamed of it. But ambition is what shapes the world, Draco. What decides who sits at the top, and who kneels.”
Draco risked a sidelong glance. “You sound like you’ve thought about it a lot.”
“I have,” Tom said simply, the honesty disarming in its ease. “And if you truly are a Malfoy, I believe you have as well.”