Chapter Text
Draco Malfoy remembered the moment everything ended.
Not as a memory, not clearly, but in flashes. Light splitting, a curse gone wrong and his own voice shouting something he couldn’t quite grasp, then the pain. Not sharp, not clean, but wrong. As if he was being forced to bend, to break, into a shape he was never meant to take and then there was just darkness.
He woke to iron.
Cold pressed into his side, biting into bone that didn’t feel like his. The smell hit him next; blood, damp stone, and rot. He tried to move and immediately regretted it, his limbs didn’t respond the way they should. They dragged and twisted under him in the wrong angles. There were too many joints, too much weight in the wrong places.
A sound tore out of him but it wasn’t a voice. It was a low, broken whine.
No
Panic surged. Draco scrambled back, claws – claws – skidding against metal, his breath coming fast, uneven, and wrong.
Everything was wrong.
His vision sharpened strangely, colours were muted but movement was painfully clear. His ears picked up distant echoes, chains ratting, a drop of water, someone shouting from somewhere in the distance.
He tried to speak. It broke apart in his throat.
“Hel…”
What came out was a hoarse bark. He froze.
No, no, no, NO.
He tried again. Trying to force his throat to shape words, but nothing came out except the same animalistic sound. That was when he saw himself. Not a reflection, not properly, just a warped image in a dented metal bucket that had been shoved into the corner of the cage. White fur, too thin, too large. A shape that moved as he did, but wrong in every way that mattered. Familiar terrified eyes stared back at him. He knew those eyes but the body, the body wasn’t his, it couldn’t be. Could it?
A wolf.
He staggered backward until his spine hit the bars, his chest heaving. His thoughts fractured, slipping, unfamiliar instincts clawing their way up through the panic.
This isn’t real. This isn’t real.
But the collar around his neck was very real. It was thick, dark metal, etched with faint runes that pulsed when he moved too quickly, as if responding to him, watching him, waiting.
The first shock came without warning.
A figure came into view and Draco snarled, baring his fangs. Pain exploded through him, sudden, violent, absolute. His body seized, collapsing instantly as the force ripped through like lightning. Through his spine, through every nerve. His legs buckled beneath him, claws scraping uselessly against stone as a sound tore from his throat, something between a snarl and a cry. It stopped just as quickly.
He lay there, shaking, breath shallow and broken.
A laugh echoed from beyond the cages.
“Well, look at that. This one’s lively.”
He tried again, jumping to his feet, half-mad with pain and rage, snarling. The collar glowed faintly against his fur. The punishment hit harder this time, sharper, more absolute, slamming him back down as his body convulsed against the stone.
Another voice, calmer.
“Careful with that one. The collar’s tuned tight.”
A pause.
“Breaks them faster that way.”
Draco barely heard him, the pain still echoed phantom and lingering, his muscles twitching in its wake. His body didn’t feel like his own.
But the rage, the rage was his. It burned through the confusion, through the fear, through the wrongness of everything.
They had done this. To him.
He forced himself up again. Unsteady, shaking, but standing. His lips pulled back, instinctive, involuntary, fangs bared as a low snarl built in his throat. He didn’t think, didn’t hesitate, he lunged.
Pain. Like something inside him was being ripped apart for the attempt. They left him like that, shivering on the floor Time stretched. Minutes, hours, maybe longer. He didn’t know.
He tried to look around, to understand where he was, but the pain still clung to him. His body trembled in the aftermath, muscles twitching long after it had stopped leaving everything blurred and distant. His thoughts dragging behind him like something heavy. Enough time passed for the shaking to dull, long enough for the pain to fade into memory instead of reality. Long enough to think; they did this, the collar, the cage, this body. He forced himself to breathe slower. To think past the fear. What had happened?
The sound of footsteps broke the silence. He had had time to think, to try desperately to make sense of it. But the moment he saw them, instinct took over. His head snapped up, a growl ripped from his throat, teeth bared, body tensing to lunge. Pain slammed into him, violent and absolute, not just through his body but inside it, like something tightening around his bones, crushing, burning, forcing him down even as he tried to fight it. Even as instinct screamed at him to move. His vision blurred. The stone floor rushed up again.
Laughter followed.
“I see we haven’t learnt this lesson yet.”
The pain faded, left him hollow. One of them stepped closer, slow, deliberate. Draco saw it and felt it, that same surge, that instinct. His lips twitched, the smallest shift. Pain.
Hours passed like that. Or something like hours. Time didn’t move properly anymore. They didn’t leave this time. Not entirely. They stayed, came close, pulled back, moved just enough to provoke, to draw it out of him again.
Every snarl, every flash of teeth, every instinctive reaction. Punished.
Over and over, until the pattern carved itself into him.
Eventually he stopped. They stepped closer, his body screamed at him to react. He didn’t. Seconds passed, no pain. Something shifted. Small. Fragile. They moved again, faster this time. His body flinched, barely a growl but the collar knew. Draco collapsed again, a sound breaking out of him before he could stop it.
“Almost,” one of them said.
Almost. He lay on the ground, trembling. Because now, now he understood. Not fully. Not clearly, but enough. It wasn’t about what they did. It was about what he did and what he didn’t do. His instincts screamed at him. Fight, run, react and every time he listened it hurt. So the next time they came, Draco didn’t move. Didn’t growl, didn’t bare his teeth. He pressed himself low against the ground. Still. Silent. His body trembled with the effort but he held it.
Held himself in place and when they stepped closer. When they reached toward the bars. When every part of him screamed. He did nothing. Not because he wanted to but because he understood.
Don’t fight back. No aggression.
Not ever.