The next couple of days were awful. Tom would not say this aloud, but it was quite trying for him. Taxing and annoying was probably a better way to describe the following two days after the sorting. He had managed to get out of classes, which was quite nice. Slughorn had taken to buying Draconis' things, with Tom heavily implying that Slughorn may want to curve favor with the other, considering he could contest the Heirship of Abraxas. The idiot's eyes had practically gleamed when he took in that information. Being on the good side of both potential heirs to an infamously wealthy house? Of course he would jump at the opportunity, even if it meant spending his own gold for now. Tom was quite familiar with how he tended to do business and conduct himself, which of course he had plans to use later on, but for now it was useful enough. Draco had supplies, and robes. Although not needing a wand saved him several gold galleons, which was lucky.
However Draconis was quite touch and go. There were moments where Tom swore that he was almost normal, and then his eyes would fog over and he would drift off so suddenly it was hard to even connect the two together. Abraxas had his transition go for a solid 24 hours, and he had almost died, but this was three days so far, and possibly even more, as they had no idea how long before he had come to the Slytherins that he had been in his inheritance transition for. The count died out around day three by Tom's count, when Draco's body finally regulated to a more normal temperature. Madam Pomfrey had been relieved. It would seem despite her continual reassurances that he would be fine and make it through the transition, she had her own doubts and worries as well. It was hard to watch. Tom did not particularly have that much empathy, so it was not as though he had the same...care as someone else would, but the heat that wafted off the Mafloy's body alone was concerning enough to watch. Abraxas had been taken to the Malfoy residence relatively quickly after receiving his inheritance and he had been returned soon after he was deemed fine. Tom had not really seen anyone else go through an inheritance. He had his own, of course, but the two were so different it was hard to draw parallels.
Orion, Walburga, and Abraxas came relatively regularly, though Abraxas stayed back more often then not to try and keep Draco from becoming...Tom could not quite describe it, but it was not necessarily, pretty. Orion and Walburga brought their homework and news about the current state of affairs, which Tom drunk in eagerly. He issued few orders, and far between because he could not quite issue direct demands or commands when in the sight of the Madam, and he was uncomfortable giving such commands when he did not know everything regarding the situations, but it would seem that for all intents things were progressing fairly decently. Though Dumbledore seemed to be more sour than normal, which left Tom quite happy. Though anything that caused Dumbledore to be annoyed was a positive for Tom.
It was just Orion and Tom when Draco's body seemed to finally have acclimated to his heritance. His eyes opened slowly, Tom and Orion were speaking to the side, Tom sitting relatively close to the bed as had become common, and Orion standing in front of him. Shocking stormy grey eyes assessed them, leaving Orion stopping to stare at him. Tom turned towards Draco as well, seeing Orion distracted. Tom hummed, glancing between the two.
"He has your eyes, sort of, Orion." Tom muttered to the Black Heir who merely nodded slowly.
"Of a sort," He agreed. Draco, for his part, merely rolled those eyes, tilted his head towards Tom.
"Where you here the whole time?" He asked, curious.
"Yes," Tom stated simply, not saying anything more regarding the subject. Draco nodded slowly once.
"You did not have to." He stated, pulling his body up into a more sitting position. He was achy, but that was about the extent of it. It was a relief, although he did find himself having trouble recalling too much over the past few days.
"I know, but the alternative would be to leave you to fend for yourself, and in your situation that would have likely proved to end in your death, which would be quite unfortunate." Draco sucked in a breath, but did not say anything further about it. It was unnerving to hear the Dark Lord, young or not, speak like that about him. Draco did not think it bode well for him in any capacity.
"Right," He merely stated, ignoring the rest. "Where is the Nurse?" He questioned curiously.
"She should be returning swiftly, likely with the Headmaster. Your fever went down last night, and she stated that you would likely wake fine this morning, and Headmaster Dippet saw no reason to postpone your tests should that be the case." Draco smirked.
"I would hope not, it has been a rather, unfortunate situation. I would prefer to have the tests done sooner, rather than later, if possible."
"You will have to be careful," Orion spoke up, Draco's eyes flitted towards his, something passing through his face that Tom was not quite able to figure out before it was hidden once more. It was interesting though, and he would have to definitely watch Draco and Orion's interactions a bit closer in the coming days. It would seem that Draco had some sort of...thing with Orion that even Orion was not quite aware of.
"I know that, magic is volatile after an inheritance, father mentioned it about a million times," Draco huffed, folding his arms over his chest in annoyance. There were other things to worry about, and him being low ranking in these tests was not one. Draco was more concerned with giving too much information that the Wizarding World hadn't figured out yet during the written portions of the test. He had no idea what the tests in the 1900s were like at Hogwarts. Before Dumbledore came to power and, according to his Grandfather, ruined Hogwarts. Whilst Dumbledore did put into place a lot of changes to Hogwarts, that meant that he had no idea what the tests were going to be like. He was horridly nervous about what he was going to have to do.
"Just do your best, but try not to explode anything on accident." Tom stated clearly, cutting through Draco's thoughts effortlessly. Draco stared at him, but unwilling to actually rise to the occasion to verbally spar with the other, he merely closed his eyes and breathed out sharply.
"Headmaster," Orion said, turning on his heel slightly so that the older man could be in sight. "We were just leaving." Armando Dippet, the current headmaster of Hogwarts. Draco did not really see anything special about them, but then again, appearances could be deceiving. He had been quite a good headmaster in his own right, and had done what a lot of headmasters had struggled to do. He had more or less united the houses into a more...neutral front, and as such the bullying scales had drastically decreased more so than any other headmaster had accomplished.
"It is good to see you well, young Master Malfoy." Dippet said. His voice was cracking with age, and Draco merely smiled slightly at the other.
YOU ARE READING
The Hateful Fates
Fanfiction"You've got to be kidding me," Draco muttered under his breath, staring at the door of his room, his fingers were trembling, his body shaking, and his eyes were blown wide. A hand covered his hip, as tears clung to his eyes. Voldermort wanted him to...
