Friday's Child // Draco Malfoy

21

Juno and Draco were working directly against one another, and they didn't even know it. They were both guilty. Each was betraying one as much as the other. They both lied, holding secrets close to their chests, revealing only half-truths, and doing things they knew the other would not approve of. While Juno snuck off to liaise with Harry, and the Golden trio, while she became an integral part of the DA, Draco was doing the Dark Lord's dirty work. 

Juno was forming alliances with the person Draco hated the most in the world, excluding maybe his father, and Draco was doing everything in his power to have the Death Eater's infiltrate the castle, to do exactly what Juno was fighting against. 

But, they never claimed to be on the same side of the war. Betrayal was fundamental in that case. 

Like all their peers though, ultimately, they both were just children. They were not blessed with freedom, or choice. They were becoming soldiers, forced into a war that no one else could fight. It was fight, hide, or die. 

All they really had was each other. So, despite their opposition, they clung to one another in the shadows, forgetting the war, forgetting the sides, falling together for a moment of peace between battle, blanketing the other in comfort before they put on their battledress and headed in antithetical directions, towards rival combat. 

From comfort to combat in a matter of months. 

They'd have to forget the little life they shared, the hidden paradise. They'd have to shatter the ideation of them as a collective, to rid themselves of the solace they found in the other, to face each other at war. 

It didn't bare thinking about. 

But, it was getting to the point where they could no longer avoid it. War loomed. It waited for nobody. 

War was unforgiving. They soon learnt that. 

-------

Draco worked tirelessly. Apart from eating, hardly sleeping, attending the occasional class, and, of course, their paradisal Friday afternoons, all his hours were spent cooped up in the room of requirement, pouring over thick books detailing dark magic, ritualistic and ancient spells, some books were so old that the pages crumbled to dust when he held them - he could smell the metallic scent of the more sinister Dark Arts that were embedded in some of the pages of the more illegal books. He wracked his brains, uttering incantation after incantation, mixing different spells, doing everything he could to fix the cabinet. 

So far, he'd only managed to transport inanimate objects, that would either return broken, with parts missing, or not at all. The more the weeks seeped by the more agitated he became. Every time he was faced with that damn cabinet, he felt sick from the pressure, he had to do this, he had to prove to his father he was capable, he had to prove to the Dark Lord - he had to keep his family safe. He knew Lord Voldemort was becoming impatient, and every time he failed he pictured the pain the Dark Lord could inflict on him. He pictured those yellow, serpent like eyes, erratic with fury, but light with smugness, revelling in the fact another Malfoy had failed him, revelling in the fact he could cause more pain. He pictured his pale, veiny hands, fingers like branches reaching out to him, fingernails sharp, overgrown and filthy, the coolness of his skin as he caressed Draco, before he would flick his wrist, effortlessly flooring him. He pictured the searing pain of the Cruciatus curse, the way it would fill his body up to his eyeballs and make his brain explode into a cacophony of splitting nerves, like ice and fire running through his veins and consuming every piece of him. He pictured Voldemort turning that onto his mother. He pictured the light dimming from his mother's eyes. He pictured her writhing around on the floor until her body could no longer withstand the pain and it just gave in. He pictured it being his fault. 

So, regardless of each setback, he'd swallow his nerve and nausea in one big gulp, take a deep breath, and try again. Because, what else could he do? The world was a shitty place, full of shitty people, and if any of them were worth saving, worth fighting for, then that was his mother - above all else. 

Fixating on repairing the cabinet meant, for the most part, he didn't have time to think of what came after. He seldom thought about the consequences of the cabinet working. He didn't allow himself to dwell on the fact that, once he was successful, he would be inviting the darkest witches and wizards into a place he'd called home for almost seven years, a place he had grown to love, that had symbolised safety and security for him. He couldn't think about the fact they were going to destroy it. They'd infiltrate Hogwarts and then there would be no more space for him, no more peace, there'd be no break from his poster Slytherin life, home and school would combine and that would be that. 

He'd locked up his second task away in a deep corner of his mind. It was impenetrable. Something he would only access when the time came. He never claimed to be a good person, in fact, he was sure he was quite the opposite - a terrible person, really. But he didn't see himself as a murderer. He couldn't see himself as that. He just had to pray that, when the time came, he could find the nerve and the strength to kill Albus Dumbledore. 

As soon as even an inkling of a thought of the nature of this task entered his brain, he'd begin to feel lightheaded and dizzy, his breathing would become short and his heart would thunder and all he would want to do is run. Run back in time, run into his mother's arms, when he was just a child, much smaller than he was now, when his father would be away and they'd sit in her little sun house, when there wasn't so much to care about. 

He thought of Juno. What would she think? He knew there was never a chance of their friendship surviving beyond their Friday afternoons, he knew inside the walls of the war their relationship would disintegrate into fickle memories, he knew they could only last so long, but he couldn't help but wonder what she would make of all this. She'd be horrified, of course, but she'd never think him capable. Juno would never consider Draco could kill. She saw a light in him that everyone else had ignored, she'd nurtured that light, and brought out the good in him - there was no way she'd think that her Draco could do such a thing. Draco knew, though, her Draco was nothing but a facade, a fragment of a person he might have been if circumstances were different. Her Draco existed only in their bubble, belonging exclusively and entirely to her. He hoped she would keep that version of him alive, if only inside her head. He doubted it, though. How could a person as inherently good as Juniper Lovegood keep the false version of Draco alive, how could she think of him fondly, how could she harvest the memories of him as a 'good' person, when all he was was a murderer? A loyal and obedient follower of the Dark Lord? How could the sweetest, most gentle girl he had ever had the pleasure of meeting, harbour anything but negative feelings towards him? He would become a boy she once knew, a boy she thought she knew, that had disappointed her greatly. A boy she thought she could help, but became everything she didn't want him to be. How could a girl who shed tears when a creature was injured ever empathise with a man who killed? Even in his own mind it was too much to ask. How could she not hate the boy who fought against everything she believed in, the boy who would never fight for what was right, who would follow the Dark Lord blindly to honour his name and his family, how could she not hate the boy who was too cowardly to fight? 

How could she do anything but hate him? 

He deserved her hatred. 

He hated him too. 

A/N: I'm sorry recent chapters have been so short, I have to build up to the shift in the plot and all that good stuff, y'know. They'll get longer as the story progresses, promise!