Hallows Game || HP X Squid Game (Draco Malfoy)

6 - Phoenix

I was dumped on a road somewhere in just my underwear, tied up.

And just to add to this utterly degrading situation, it turned out that they dumped me with my fucking mugger.

The jumped up prick was just going to leave me lying there after I'd helped untie him first.

"Why should I?" He scoffed as I screamed at him to turn his thieving backside around and untie me at once. "This is what you wanted, isn't it? To crawl out of the competition? We had a chance! Do you think I wanted to mug you that night? Of course I didn't. But it's what I have to do in order to survive! And now that's on you - you and the other hundred cowards that voted to leave."

"THEY WERE FUCKING KILLING US IN THERE!"

"And they're fucking killing us out here, too," he said with a heavy sigh. "So what's the sodding difference?"

He looked resigned, tired and beaten. His sleek black hair flopped over his green eyes, pale face sporting chiselled cheekbones. Despite his sharp looks, there was a sort of vulnerability emanating off him, giving the air of a frightened youth.

"What's your name?" I asked him as he crouched down to roughly cut the ropes tied around my wrist with his penknife, his face hardened in a scowl. "I don't remember you from school."

"That's because I didn't go. Well... not really."

"Oh. I just got the impression that all the players had been past Hogwarts students, even Dumbledore-"

"My name is Nico," he cut in sharply as he dropped my hands, and quickly rose back to his feet. "But you won't remember me as that."

I stared up at the dark haired boy in confusion, searching his face beneath the light of the street lamps.

He sighed heavily, tossing me my clothes. It was only then I realised I was shivering in the cold. Quickly getting dressed, I kept throwing him furtive glances.

"What do you mean you didn't really go to Hogwarts?" I asked curiously as I zipped up my tattered parka. "Surely you either did, or you didn't?"

He gave me a sideways glance, as though contemplating how much more he was willing to tell me.

In the end, probably out of nothing better to do, he told me.

"My parents named me Pansy. That's who went to Hogwarts. Not me. I never felt... right, I never felt like me."

This, I was not expecting.

"Pansy? As in Pansy Parkinson?"

"No. Yes. But I was never her. This is me. Nicolas Parkinson. I had the surgery two years ago. My family disowned me when they realised what I'd spent my trust fund on. Kicked me to the curb and left me with nothing."

"Wait- does Draco Malfoy know? Is that why he got you beaten up?"

To my surprise, Nico just threw his head back and gave a sycophantic laugh. "Malfoy got me beaten up because he's a chicken shit coward who was simply threatened by the way I looked at him. I don't think he even knew I was someone he once dated. Fuck, what I ever saw in him, I'll never know."

"So... do you, um- date boys still?" I asked. I knew I was being overly nosey but curiosity was getting the better of me.

"I'm pan, if that's what you're asking," he said, his eyes flashing in amusement, "so one might argue that my parents must have had some idea when giving me my birth name."