Draco Malfoy and the Mirror of Ecidyrue

Part 1: Draco Malfoy and the Mirror of Ecidyrue

Summary:

All it takes is one look in a mirror and an ill-advised attempt to shatter it, before an embittered Draco Malfoy fresh out of Azkaban is sent back into his body on the day he gets his Hogwarts letter.

Suddenly, Draco has an unwanted second chance, with a Sorting Hat that doesn't know what to do with him, a certain Muggleborn who won't leave his study table alone, and green eyes he just can't get out of his head. And then there's his new wand, whose choice of him could just mark him as every bit as dark a wizard as his name means he should be.

1: The Hogwarts Letter

It was in the moment that Harry Potter earnestly told the Wizengamot that he did not truly believe Draco Malfoy was evil that Draco began to wish Potter dead.

It was a surprisingly new feeling. Draco would have thought himself long familiar with it. For much of the past year, though, he'd wished the exact opposite. For the sake of his family, with each passing day his ancestral home was ruled by a noseless madman, there had been nothing Draco prayed for more than for Potter to be out there somewhere, ready to fulfill his destiny. To rid the world of darkness. To save it. To save him.

And Potter had, the world and Draco. From Fiendfyre, from the Dark Lord, and from Azkaban in turn, because of course Potter had taken the high road. He did the right thing no matter what. He didn't even hate Draco enough not to do that.

No, Draco had seen the way Potter looked at him with those Avada Kedavra-green eyes all through his trial. Potter was too far above him to hate him. The only thing there had been pity.

Draco wanted him dead for that pity.

For the pity that had been on his face as he waited for Draco and his mother at the door of the courtroom afterwards, not even seeming to notice all the stares on him. He'd just handed Draco back his wand without a word.

When Draco had tried to speak to him, Potter had walked away. Maybe he hadn't heard Draco. Or maybe he had.

The state of the Manor was pitiful when Draco and his mother returned to it. It had been picked all over, once by the side of dark and then by the side of light, Aurors checking it up to the minute of their arrival. Then they let his mother raise the wards again.

Except she didn't, because they were waiting for Draco to do it. His father had a true life sentence this time, so Draco was officially Lord Malfoy now.

Draco had feared his wand wouldn't work, that its allegiance would be too deeply to Potter along with the rest of the damn world's. But it raised the Manor's wards for Lord Malfoy.

Say one thing for being Lord Malfoy. The Lord was in possession of an astonishingly extensive wine cellar.

His mother gave him a wide enough berth for him to sneak down to the cellars unnoticed. She'd been eerily quiet since the Dark Lord fell. Since the Dark Lord rose again, really. Maybe they should have been celebrating their reprieve thanks to Potter's pity. Or mourning how that pity hadn't extended to Father. But despite how much time Draco had spent in his cell in Azkaban, thinking what he would say to his mother if he ever got the chance, neither of them seemed to have much to say to each other these days, even alone and safe. Draco found his comfort in a bottle instead, as only was tradition for a Lord Malfoy.

He didn't know what he would have said to Potter if he stayed and listened. He would have been expected to thank him, for one.

"Thank you for this, Potter," Draco said to the empty stone chamber behind the wine cellar, hearing his mirthless laugh swim over the walls with the same echo that tortured screams had, when it was Aunt Bella drawing them out with particular high-pitched desperation from their prisoners. He knew himself ungrateful, knew himself as rotten as his aunt's evil corpse decaying in the ground as he laughed, "Thank you, Potter! Thank you!"