Relentless - A Dramione FanFic

Living Arrangements

Rather than use the main entrance, Draco dragged his trunk around the side of the castle to the door used by the first years coming from the boats.  It was mostly hidden and had provided a discreet outlet for his meetings with Snape in the boat house during his first seven years.  Snape had created a secret passage halfway up the staircase that came out behind the Slytherin tapestry, allowing he or Draco to enter the Great Hall unnoticed.  Draco slid from behind the fabric and onto the end of the Slytherin bench without a single look in his direction.  Instinctively, he shot a glance to the Gryffindor table.  She was there of course, laughing with her friends as always.  He quickly looked away, and although he wasn't hungry, began eating the food in front of him, as to not stand out amidst the other students who were stuffing their faces.

The food disappeared, and Professor McGonagall announced the prefects from each house.  Draco wasn't really paying attention, but two names did catch his ear.  Ginny Weasley and Luna Lovegood.  Good for them, he thought.  After their bravery displayed during the battle, they deserve the recognition and can definitely handle the responsibility.  He lifted his eyes to the front of the Great Hall where the prefects were standing.  To his surprise, Luna was looking straight at him.  When his eyes met hers, she flashed him a bright smile.  He was so caught off guard that he returned the smile before remembering who we was supposed to be within these walls and dropping his eyes back to his lap.

Professor McGonagall dismissed the houses separately, instructing the first years to remain close to their house prefects so they didn't end up with the wrong house or completely lost somewhere in the castle.  He mused to himself how small the first years were, their eyes so full of excitement and wonder.  If only he'd been afforded that kind of frivolity.  

***

From the moment he stepped inside Hogwarts, he had expectations.  Most of them in place before he was even born.  The Malfoy heir was expected to remain loyal to his pure blood roots, and be an unquestioning servant of the Dark Lord.  When Voldemort fell, the lifestyle Lucius had become accustomed to, was suddenly ripped from him.  He was able to keep himself out of Azkaban, but he was never able to reclaim his full status in the wizarding world.  Sure, they still had money, but he'd lost the power, the prestige. Lucius knew Voldemort had made at least one horcrux and therefore could not be completely dead.  The elder Malfoy made it his mission to help the Dark Lord return to power.  He expected Draco to do the same.

Draco, however, had Snape to teach him the truth... that the only thing Voldemort cared for was power.  The death eaters were not his friends, they were his slaves, bought and paid for with the one thing only he could give... a false sense of security.  Voldemort led by fear, because he believed fear was the strongest human emotion.  Severus taught Draco that fear was only effective on the weak, those willing to accept any sort of deplorable acts as long those acts were not being perpetrated upon themselves or the ones they loved.  

Throughout their years together, Snape shared his story with Draco.  The story of Lily.  How he had loved her from childhood, but lost himself in the dark arts when she chose James, and how he became one of the weak.  He told Draco of finding her lying next to Harry's crib and holding her lifeless body in his arms.  How in that moment, a power was awakened in him, far greater than any the Dark Lord could ever hope to possess.  The power of a love so deep, it transcended death.  It was a power Voldemort could not understand, nor anticipate, which made it the only power that could succeed against him.

Draco absorbed what Severus taught him, he embraced it and believed it, but he never understood it until a family moved in next door to the muggle home in which he and Snape spent much time during their summers of "tutoring".  The first time he saw the girl with the wild hair running across her lawn, a hard bound copy of "The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh" clutched to her chest, Draco knew what his godfather had meant when he said: