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drarrywords · 2 months ago

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hi! I've written one chapter of a new fic. it's titled 'blood in the water' for now. here's the first chapter, I'd love your thoughts so I can continue with it!

He was not in chains when they brought him to the Ministry.

No iron bound his wrists. Yet there was a stillness to him, the kind that holds on to men who have been broken before, who understand the futility of resistance. The Aurors surrounded him like wraiths, silent and grim, moving in practiced synchrony, as if they weren’t with a man, but something more dangerous. A remnant of war. A curse that refused to die.

There was no need for restraints anymore. The Ministry had moved beyond them.

These days, it preferred the illusion of civility. It liked its executions clean and its dissidents obedient, even in death. No public trials, no spectacle. Just quiet disappearances and rewritten records. History was theirs now—scrubbed clean, retold in the Minister’s voice.

He looked up as they passed the atrium. The banners were everywhere—red and gold and black, the Minister’s face staring down like a monarch from old portraits, her smile thin and weaponised. She watched them all, always softly smiling. Always victorious. Worship wasn’t requested anymore. It was simply the way things were done.

He refused to bow. But the Aurors did, heads dipping just slightly, like leaves caught in wind—not in reverence, but in a silence carved out by fear. That was what respect looked like now: silence, stillness, compliance.

The war had ended, yes. But peace had not come. Not truly. It had only changed its shape, cloaked itself in new symbols and new slogans. The Ministry called it justice. Restoration. Cleansing. But it smelled too much like vengeance. The halls still reeked of it.

They called it progress.

But it was rot.

The lift halted with a mechanical sigh, and the Aurors nudged him forward. He moved without protest, his boots echoing off polished marble that was too pristine, too sterile. As if the blood spilled during the war had been scrubbed from every corner and buried beneath coats of wax and silence.

They stopped before a heavy door. Dark mahogany, carved with an intricate gold crest. It gleamed in the pale light, ancient and officious, as though stolen from the house of some old pure-blood patriarch. Regal. Arrogant. Unashamed.

“How quaint,” he said quietly, a smirk brushing the corner of his mouth. “Into pure-blood decor now, is she?”

“There are no bloodlines,” one of the Aurors replied, tone flat. “We are all the same now.”

He turned slightly, eyes sharp. “Radical optimism is how the worst regimes begin.”

The Auror stiffened. “You dare insult the Minister?”

“Suits the likes of me, wouldn’t you say?”

No one laughed. The air between them grew still, like a held breath. Then the Auror reached into his cloak and produced a slip of parchment that was wrinkled, half-burnt, the edges curled like the petals of a dying flower.

“What suits you,” the Auror said, voice like cold iron, “is Azkaban. But the Minister, in her infinite mercy, has chosen something else.”

He took the parchment without hesitation. The Auror didn’t meet his eyes.

The paper was warm from the Auror’s hand. It smelled faintly of ash and old magic, the kind that clung to cursed objects and memories better left buried. He uncurled the brittle edge and read the message.

Two words. Scorched, faded, almost spectral in their presence:

Nimbus 2001.

His breath caught in the back of his throat not from sentiment, but from the cruel precision of it. Then, a sound escaped him—a low, hollow laugh, joyless and sharp, like a blade dragged over stone. She knew what it would mean to him. The broom. The boy. The war before the war. A name that once meant freedom. Now, it was just another leash.

He stepped toward the door. It had no keyhole, no visible latch. Just a circular indent in the centre, pulsing softly, waiting.

He held up the paper and whispered the name.

“Nimbus 2000.”

The door clicked. Almost reluctantly. As though it too resented being opened. The Aurors stepped back. What was beyond the door, it seemed, was not for them.

He pushed the door open.

Inside, the chamber was silent and warm. No grandeur, no throne. Just a vast room with a single desk, bathed in the soft golden light of enchanted lamps. Shelves lined the far walls with books, scrolls, legal volumes, time-worn parchments that pulsed with lingering spells.

And behind the desk stood Hermione Granger.

She didn’t wear robes, nor the hard mask of power. She wore something simpler, dark, professional, clean. But her eyes were not the eyes of the girl he once knew in war fields and the aftermath. They were colder now. Older. Like stone that had learned to speak.

He stood in the doorway, and for a moment, they stared at each other in perfect, suspended silence.

Then she spoke—calm, precise, and utterly without warmth, “Mr. Malfoy.”

“No need for formalities, Granger.” Draco said, quashing the paper in his hand. He let it drop, the scrap of scorched paper drifting to the polished floor like an old memory. It skittered toward the far corner of the room. Hermione’s eyes followed the paper for a fraction too long.

“We’re well past that, no?”

“Filthy little mud-blood,” Hermione said softly, mocking, with the faintest curl of her lip, “Nimbus 2001 isn’t much of an insult as that was, isn’t it, Mr. Malfoy?”

“I’m well-versed with the symbolism, Granger,” He spat, “I don’t underestimate it.”

“Great minds think alike.”

“A great mind would arrest and detain a war-criminal, as would’ve been your fate, had the dark lord won the war,” He said.

She took a slow breath and stepped around the desk, her boots silent on the stone. “But he didn’t win. I did.”

There was something dangerous in the way she said it. No pride. Just fact. Just fire, long since cooled into steel.

“You think this makes you better than him?” Draco asked. “This theatre of order? This polished dictatorship?”

“No.” She said, “Great minds do think alike, Draco. You wanted blood. I wanted peace. You had a name. I had a cause. But in the end, I built an order that is meant to survive us.”

He met her eyes. “You sound more like him than you think.”

She didn’t blink. “And you sound like a boy who still believes legacy means safety.”

She came to a stop in front of him now—close. Closer than comfort. “We are alike,” she said, voice low, steady, like the blade of a knife just before it cuts. “But only one of us survived the war with their mind intact and it wasn’t yours.”

For a moment, neither spoke. The weight of it — the memory, guilt, history — settled between them like ash. Then, Draco’s voice broke the silence like a crack in frostbitten glass, “What do your friends think of all this?”

“Your little golden trio,” he continued, voice low and laced with mockery. “Potter, Weasley. The ones who used to hang on your every word, the ones who fought beside you in the war? What would they say now? Watching you build this.”

Still, she said nothing.

“You really think they’d be proud of what you’ve done?”

At that, she moved—subtle, barely a shift in weight, but Draco caught it. A flicker behind her eyes, quickly buried. He turned toward her, pausing, pressing just enough.

“Or maybe,” he said, more gently now, “they aren’t proud at all.”

Hermione breathed slowly, deliberately.

“They understand what had to be done,” she said at last. Her tone was measured, almost tired.

Draco tilted his head. “That doesn’t sound like understanding. That sounds like justification.”

She met his gaze, still composed.

“This is the outcome of a war,” she said. “And in the aftermath of it all, someone had to stand in the ashes and decide what rose next.”

“Oh, how noble,” Draco sneered. “Still clinging to the idea that this is for the greater good. That all your little compromises don’t matter because it’s you making them.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I think I do,” he said, stepping closer. “I think you’ve become what you once fought.”

A beat. The room stilled.

Hermione’s voice, when it came, was soft. “They knew I was changing.”

“They?” he echoed. “You mean Potter and Weasley.”

She crossed to the window, her back to him now. The light carved her silhouette in gold and grey “Ron left,” she said quietly. “Went back to his family. Said he didn’t recognise the person I was becoming.”

“I wonder why that is.”

He saw it then—the tension in her shoulders, the breath she didn’t quite take. The careful stillness that only came when one was holding something in, “Do you believe that this is a

“No,” Draco said, and for once there was no venom in his voice. Just cold observation. “I believe you wanted to lead in good faith. You wanted an order so that no one would have to suffer and bear the cost that we did. But you went too far. And you mistook control for peace.”

That landed.

Hermione looked away. Her hand brushed the edge of the desk, fingers curling slightly against the wood. There was a long pause that lasted too long. Draco stepped toward her again, slower now.

Draco raised an eyebrow. “And Potter?”

A pause.

“Where is he, Hermione?”

Still silence.

“Don’t tell me you lost him too.”

Nothing.

He gave a soft, dry laugh. “You did.”

That’s when she turned. Slowly. Precisely. Her expression unreadable, but something colder had crept into her voice.

“I didn’t lose him,” she said. “He made a choice.”

“And?”

She hesitated.

Draco stepped into the silence, now circling her instead.

“What happened, Granger?”

Her eyes flashed then but not with rage. With something deeper. Something more human. A flicker of guilt, perhaps. Or grief so old it had turned hard and unrecognisable, “He told me this wasn’t what we fought for,” she said.

“Was he wrong?”

She didn’t answer.

“Where is he?” Draco asked, softly now. “Where’s Harry Potter?”

Hermione's jaw clenched. Her eyes dropped—just for a second—and that was answer enough.

“You didn’t,” Draco whispered, almost stunned. “You didn’t put the Harry Potter in Azkaban.”

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then where?” he pressed. “Where did you bury your conscience, Granger?”

She looked at him. Full in the face.

“Three levels below this floor,” she said, voice steady now. “Behind a locked ward only I can open. No cell. No charges. No trial.”

Draco stared at her, words caught in his throat.

“He’s not dead,” she added, as if that was mercy. “But he’s quiet.”

Draco turned away, pressing his palm against the desk like he needed to steady himself.

“You locked him in the Ministry?” he asked, voice low. “Here?”

“He gave me no choice.”

Draco let out a breath that was almost a laugh. “There’s always a choice.”

“Not when the symbol threatens the order I fought to built,” she said. “Not when he wanted to tear it down. I tried to reason with him. I begged him to understand. But he couldn't let go of the war. He thought he could win it again.”

“And you thought locking him up would stop the war from coming back?”

“I did it to bring the order he resisted against because he couldn’t see beyond the past. I had to when he refused.” she said.

Draco stepped back, still watching her.

“No one knows of this?”

“No,” she said. “Not even Ron. He thinks Harry left. That he couldn’t live with what we were becoming. I let him believe it.”

He was quiet.

Finally, he said, “You're more dangerous than the dark lord.”

Hermione smiled, “You still fear a dead man, Malfoy.”

“I do,” He said, “The fear runs far too deep. But what is worse, Granger, is that your own friends fear you so much that you had to lock one of them in your own house that you seem to have built alone.”

“You think this is what I want to do to him?” she whispered, almost too soft to hear. “That I want to play god?”

“You don’t play god,” he said.

That made her blink. Just once.

He took another step, his tone turning colder, “You’re not just locking people away, Granger. Do you not see what you have done?”

A pause.

Her gaze flicked to him—sharp, calculating, tired. And then, finally, the mask cracked, just a little.

“I had to,” she said. “They wouldn’t let me build this unless the story made sense.”

“What story?” Draco snapped.

“That Harry was always meant to win. That his death would have meant chaos. That I — the Ministry — rebuilt itself after the war. But he wouldn’t let the lie settle. He kept digging. Kept remembering.”

“What did he remember?”

Her voice dropped. “Things that didn’t fit. Things that shouldn’t have happened. He kept asking about timelines, spells he swore we never learned, names that don’t exist. At least, not anymore. He said he could feel time wrapping itself around him. People forgetting. Whole events being wiped like chalk on a blackboard.”

Draco stared at her. “You’re rewriting history.”

“I’m preserving peace.”

“You’re manufacturing it,” he said, incredulous.

“Broke.” Hermione said simply.

She crossed to the side table, picked up a thick file, and laid it in front of him. It looked old, but the parchment inside was crisp. Draco opened it. A series of charts, memory scans, time-maps. Words blurred and circled, names crossed out, loops indicated by red runes.

In the centre, a moving photograph of Harry Potter, asleep, twitching under a binding charm. His face was pale, lips parted, eyes twitching behind closed lids. Beneath it: Subject: Unknown.

“He’s in a loop,” Hermione said. “His mind knows something. But the more he tries to understand it, the more damaged he becomes.”

Draco looked up. “And no one’s been able to—”

“No one can enter his mind,” she said. “We tried. Legilimens. Memory-walkers. Even Unspeakables. Some came out mute. Other lost their minds.”

“And me?” Draco asked, carefully.

Hermione turned to him, full now. Her voice was calm. Icy. Final.

“You’re the last gamble. You’re not just someone he knew, Malfoy. You’re someone who doesn’t belong.”

“What does that mean?”

“You weren’t meant to be there,” she said. “In that last battle. Not really. You’re an outlier. A flaw. You survive in every altered version of history we’ve tried to run. That makes your presence unique. Resistant. Stable.”

He stared at her, something cold settling in his stomach.

“And if I say no?”

Hermione shrugged slightly. “Then your mother remains where she is.”

His jaw clenched. “Azkaban.”

“No,” she said, almost gently. “Worse. She’s not in any records. Not anymore. As far as the world knows, Narcissa Malfoy was never born.”

Draco stepped back like she’d struck him. His breath hitched.

“You’re erasing people.”

“I’m erasing the rot,” she said. “The bloodlines. The hatred. The histories that keep birthing more war.”

“By purging them?”

“By forgetting them,” Hermione whispered.

Draco laughed bitterly. “You sound just like him. He wanted to erase people too. He used death. You use silence.”

Hermione’s face flickered. “You still don’t understand. I’m not him. I’m the one who won against him.”

“You did not win. He did. Harry did.”

“I did this,” She seethed, “Without me, he was nothing. He survived because of me. He won because of me. I won this war.”

“Did you?” Draco asked. “Or are you just the dark lord’s successor?”

The air in the room turned thin.

Hermione looked at him—truly looked. No masks. No pretense.

“I brought you here,” she said, “because you can try this and survive it. You want your mother. I want Harry Potter to forget who he was. Not the boy who lived. Just a boy, who had nothing to do with the war.”

Draco looked back at the file, then at the door behind her. Heavy wood, steel-bound, sealed in runes.

Behind it: Harry Potter. Trapped in time. Screaming in silence.

“And what happens,” he asked, voice dry, “if I go in and don’t come back?”

Hermione didn’t blink. “Then we’ll find someone else.”

Silence.

Draco ran a hand through his hair, as if brushing away the weight settling on his shoulders. He stared at the photo of Harry again—haunted, flickering, looping, “And if I do come back?” he asked. “What then?”

Hermione smiled, just faintly.

“Then we’ll finally know how to kill the past.”

#drarry #harry potter #draco malfoy #draco x harry #drarry fanfic #drarry oneshot #fanfic #ao3 #fiction

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drarrywords · 2 months ago

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Mine, still

Part 1

The day after Harry held Scorpius's hand, London rumbled on as usual, an indifferent grey sky, like a soot-smeared parchment, and rain loomed thickly in the clouds. The sort of day meant for silence, or regret.

Harry had intended to wait. He didn’t want to rush into it. But he'd spent most of the night pacing between the armchair and Teddy's bedroom, the dull ache in his chest only deepening each time he remembered the soft weight of Scorpius's fingers curling around his own. It felt less like a memory and more like a tether—one that pulled at something he didn’t know he still had inside him.

And yet, despite all plans of waiting for a while, by mid-afternoon, Harry found himself standing again in front of the apothecary. The windows glowed faintly, warm and yellow. A few flower boxes hung slightly crooked from the windowsill, their blooms faded from lack of sun. The bell over the door jingled when he stepped in, and it felt like stepping into a memory already fraying at the edges.

Draco looked up.

He was bent over a pewter cauldron, steam curling around his face like a veil. His eyes were bloodshot. There was no sarcasm today, no sharpness in his posture. Just exhaustion. As if the night had wrung him out.

“You're back,” he said, voice scratchy. A statement, not a greeting.

Harry nodded. “I said I wanted to try.”

“Try what, exactly? To fix fifteen years in fifteen minutes?” Draco’s voice was soft but brittle, like old glass. “You think holding his hand makes you his father?”

Harry stepped closer, slowly. “I think it means something.”

Draco's mouth twisted. “Everything means something to you. Justice. Redemption. Children with your eyes.”

The cauldron hissed behind him, and he ignored it. He set down the stirring rod with deliberate calm. “Tell me, Potter, what exactly is it you want? Custody? Or the consolation that your legacy won’t die with you.”

Harry flinched. “That’s not fair.”

“Fair?” Draco’s voice cracked as he stepped forward, suddenly close. “Do you think any of this is fair? I raised him. Named him. Sang to him when he wouldn’t sleep. Sat by his cot for nights on end, terrified I would ruin him.”

His hands were shaking now, fists clenched at his sides. “And now you show up, all torn conscience and big Gryffindor heart, and what? You want to be part of the story?”

“Yes!” Harry shouted before he could stop himself. “I want to be part of it. I have to be.”

Draco shoved him. It wasn't violent—it was desperate. A slap of palms to chest. “You don't get to want. You don’t get to have.”

Harry stumbled back but didn’t raise a hand in return. Draco had said that to him before. That he didn’t get to have, “I'm not here to take him from you. I wouldn’t. But I can’t just pretend I don’t know.”

“You should have stayed away. You should have let me keep him safe from you.”

That landed deeper than either of them expected. Harry went still, jaw tightening. “You really think I'm a danger to him?”

“No,” he whispered, unable to meet his gaze, “No, not like that. But you complicate things. You — for years, nothing was safe because of you. He is just a boy. He doesn’t know who Harry Potter is. He doesn’t know that there was a war. He doesn’t know, Harry.”

The room was suddenly too quiet. The cauldron behind them gave off a single bloop of protest before settling into silence. The shelves looked on, witnesses of decades of pain. Draco’s hands trembled again. This time, he didn’t hide it.

Harry watched, unsure, caught between anger and something much softer. He had never heard Draco say his name. And especially not like this. Desperate. Pleading. He wanted to close the distance. To reach for Draco’s shoulder or offer something resembling comfort. But he didn’t. Couldn’t.

So instead, he said, gently, “You look tired.”

Draco gave a broken laugh. “That’s because I am.”

Harry shifted. “Do you—do you want help? With him, I mean. Just for a little while. I can—look after him while you work. No strings.”

Draco stared at him.

“Please,” Harry added, quieter. “Let me try.”

A long pause. Then: “He’s in the back.”

The back room was small, sun-dappled through a tiny skylight. Scorpius sat on a thick rug shaped like a puffskein, babbling to a wooden Niffler. He looked up when Harry entered and blinked with those impossible green eyes.

“Hi,” Harry said, crouching slowly, “I’m Harry.”

Scorpius considered him, then crawled over on steady hands and knees. When he reached Harry, he held up the Niffler like a prize.

Harry took it with exaggerated reverence. “Is this yours?”

Scorpius nodded solemnly. Then grinned.

It wasn’t much. Just a smile. But it carved through something in Harry’s chest like a firelight in frost. He sat with him, letting the boy clamber into his lap, curious hands tugging at the stitching of his robes.

They played like that for almost an hour. Just small, ordinary things. Building towers with potion tins, knocking them over, laughing. At one point, Scorpius bumped his head lightly and blinked as if betrayed by gravity. Harry kissed the spot gently, instinctively, before he could think better of it.

Draco stood in the doorway a moment later, arms crossed but face unreadable.

“He likes you,” he said quietly.

Harry looked up. “I don’t think he has the cognitive ability to do otherwise yet.”

Draco’s lips twitched. Not quite a smile. Not not a smile either.

Then something shifted.

Draco’s shoulders folded inward, as if an invisible weight had doubled. His arms came around himself. He stepped back into the room and sat heavily on a stool beside the changing table, head bowed.

“I thought I could do it all,” he said softly, not looking at Harry. “Be both parents. Keep him away from the war and everything that came with it. But he’s starting to ask. Starting to notice the way other kids have mums, or two parents who show up at the park. I didn’t think you were real to him.”

Harry didn’t interrupt.

“And then you walked in. And I saw his eyes. And I saw your eyes, and it all—” Draco’s voice cracked.

A silence stretched. Then the sound of stifled breath. Wet. Shaky.

Draco covered his face with his hands.

It wasn’t loud. He didn’t sob or keen. But Harry recognized the sound. A quiet, hollow sort of crying—the kind that had nowhere left to go.

Harry didn’t touch him.

He stayed seated on the rug, Scorpius in his lap, and waited. Waited until Draco composed himself, breathing uneven. Waited until he finally looked up, red-eyed, but no longer brittle.

“You want to be in his life,” Draco said, voice rough.

“Yes.”

“Then you’ll have to take it slow. With both of us.”

Harry nodded. “I’m not in a rush.”

Draco gave him a long look. Then, quietly: “Do you still hate me?”

Harry looked down at Scorpius, who had fallen asleep against his chest. “No. I did, when we were young. But after the war I — we did what we could in those circumstances. I didn’t know better then, nor did you.”

Draco blinked. Something passed through his expression—too complicated for just one emotion.

He stood. Pulled a blanket from the cot and handed it over.

Harry tucked it around the boy. Stood carefully.

Draco opened the door for him. No words passed as Harry stepped through.

Just before it closed behind him, Draco said softly, “Same time tomorrow?”

Harry paused. Then, with a small smile, “Yeah. Same time tomorrow.”

#drarry #harry potter #draco malfoy #draco x harry #drarry fanfic #drarry oneshot #fanfic #ao3 #fic rec #fiction #draco lucius malfoy #harry x draco #potter

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