Restoration

41

The walls of Hogwarts greeted them with cold. And the mold-like smell. It was as if someone had forgotten to turn on the heating over the summer, which was a paradox on its own. And that was only one of the first changes that students realized were not going away. Most of the staff were either fired or never showed up back to their work upon finding out that the Death Eaters had taken full control of it.

Everyone's name was written into the school census, clearly marking whether they were pure-blood or half-blood. In some cases, the student record was unclear - such was the case of Elara Dotson, whose records had all vanished, or perhaps never existed in the first place. Regardless of it, the Lestrange vs Dotson case revealed a dark finding, which most of the wizarding world believed to be true. Elara had been born a Rosier, later adopted by the Dotsons, therefore making her a pure-blood.

She had, like a few others, gained some sort of immunity from any kind of torture or punishment. Instead, the Death Eaters had taken out their anger on half-bloods, sometimes belittling them for their own enjoyment, without even trying to pretend it was a punishment for their behavior or actions in the first place.

One thing that even the most powerful wizards weren't able of preventing was the school gossip, which spread faster than any plague before. Draco listened to those rumours, and every time someone mentioned Elara being a member of the Rosier family, he flinched. Not because of the sentence that followed - Wasn't Draco awfully close with her? Aren't they like...basically cousins? - but because that was a big, fat lie. A farce he never denied, nor responded to.

His mother had been awfully secretive about it, and no matter how many times he tried asking her about it, she bluntly told him to leave it. She explained to him that it wasn't her secret to tell in the first place and that she wouldn't speak of it anymore until Vinda Rosier permitted her.

Draco was sitting in Potions class, right next to the window. He wasn't paying attention to the lecture, nor to his friends who had been passing notes through most of the class. The only two people who seemed to have been actively listening to the professor were Daphne and Elara, taking down notes and ignoring their friends' playful chattering.

"Three Broomsticks after classes?" Anthony whispered to Blaise, who didn't need much convincing. It had become a habit of theirs to spend their Friday evenings there, as the Death Eaters didn't care what happened to the students after the last bell rang before the weekend.

"What's your thoughts, Lovegood?" Blaise nudged Luna. She wasn't either chatting with them or listening to the lecture - she was drawing scribbles of tiny little creatures dancing above Professors' head. Creatures which no one seemed to notice.

"I could go for a butterbeer," she smiled at him.

"I see you've used singular form there," he chuckled, "but I was thinking about-,"

"Getting so drunk you'll be relocating Gryffindor's posters from the Great Hall to the toilets at three in the morning again?" Daphne interrupted him, as she turned around to silence them.

"I'll join," Gregory sneered from the back row, which made Luna's hair stand up with discomfort.

It had been weeks since their final year at Hogwarts started, and they had slowly got used to the new teaching system brought in by the darkest and cruelest of wizards. Some students, mainly Slytherins, had thrived in that environment, where they were allowed to practice dark magic on their classmates. Draco and Blaise had completely detached themselves from Gregory and Vincent, who began shoving psychopathic tendencies as they enjoyed when they tortured others.

"It wasn't an open invitation," Draco calmly replied, still staring outside the window.

They would've spat out a nasty comment back, had it not been anyone else but Draco. Regardless of their estranged relationship, they still respected him enough to stay silent when he told them to. That, or they feared his new friend group.