The Failed Education of One Draco Malfoy

Hidden Messages

"Sophronia," you said, waiting for the recognition to pool in his eyes, a recognition that did not come. "Not everything that's encouraged is right. You still have a lot to learn, Malfoy."

You vanished up the stairs before he could say another word.

Parkinson was right; you were a bloody nightmare.

▪◾◼◾▪

He'd resigned to hating you after that encounter. With your insufferable intelligence and quiet tendencies, it seemed easy to write you off. But something kept drawing him back to you. He felt like there was something he was missing, some piece to the hidden puzzle of your soul.

Eventually he caved and found it, a miniscule nothing of a book in the farthest corner of the library. The Artifacts of Reason: Ancient Wizards of the Northern Isles by Sophronia.

It took him less than a day to read it, nothing more than a compilation of essays, handwritten, revisions in the margins.

But it told him everything he needed to know.

You were sending him a message. A message he couldn't let himself hear.

Instead, he continued to follow her fingerprints across the dusty shelves, continued to find authors and listen to the words of ancient worlds and not-so-ancient ideas. As summer fell on him yet again, history repeated itself before his very eyes. His home swirled with darkness and urgent tasks. Essays and memoirs were replaced with blueprints and diagrams. Mechanical spells overrode ancient philosophies.

He knew you'd been trying to tell him his position in all of this was wrong. He knew you'd tried protecting him from the consequences of He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named. Or maybe you weren't; maybe you were just infatuated with historical literature. Either way, he recognized the meanings in the writings on the shelves. He knew where you stood. But Sophronia couldn't save him now.

When he settled himself on the train, he watched you pass by, wondering if you'd forgotten all about his failed attempt at flirting. Probably. It didn't matter now, anyway. He had much more pressing things to focus on than a silent nobody like yourself.

But as the weeks wore on, he missed reading books after you. He missed following the missing holes in the farthest library shelves. He missed daydreaming in class about having sophisticated conversations with you, impressing you with his knowledgeable wit. It was the worst he'd been doing in years, copying homework and hoping to Merlin that somehow he'd manage to fix the damned cabinet.

And then he caught you looking. Maybe it was the circles under his eyes or the sickly flush to his face. Perhaps you noticed the way he was no longer chasing your footsteps through the library. Regardless, the look on your face - unreadable but unmistakably directed at him - shook the part of his soul that didn't care about your intentions. He wanted you to understand what was going on. He wanted you to know he'd received your message, that he just couldn't listen to it. That you didn't understand.

There was a book he'd found in his father's study, old but not ancient. It was an author he'd never heard of before, but he'd read it all the same. As he sat unhappily on the floor by the cabinet, he couldn't help thinking about that book. It was about a man, no more than twenty it seemed, working for a grand wizard during the Renaissance. His wife wanted him to create potions to dispel the plague, which was quickly ravaging the muggle and squib populations (the latter of which was much more prominent back then as wizard kind and muggles were more likely to intermingle). A rebellion was quickly forming to help the non-magic beings, one the man was keen on joining. However, the man he worked for, not quite but nearly a king, opposed such an idea. The wizard felt the muggles deserved to suffer, to figure out how to solve the problems on their own. When the man's wife fell ill, the grand wizard made him choose: the rebellion or the love of his life. Chronicling his decision, the book rang with the unsteady voice of a man lost between a dreadful choice.

Draco realized this was his own story.

The next morning, he saw you casting glances his way down the table. He knew he needed to say something.

"Have you read Delias Aetherius?" he asked, catching you off guard on the way down a forgotten hall to the library.

You stopped, pausing in thought for a moment before shaking your head. "I haven't."

He held out the worn copy of the text, a copy that had been tucked into his trunk alongside ink-scribbled parchments and out-of-date manuals. "I read Sophronia. This is my reply." The way you hesitated made him cringe, and he shoved the book into your hands. "Not a favor. No strings attached. Just read it."

Then he disappeared, returning to the cabinet that called his name. He drowned in instructions, beating his hands against forgotten tables and begging the spells to work just this once.

You found him in the library, hunched over what felt like his thousandth attempt at further research.

He jolted as you set the book down in front of him, furrowed forehead hinting that you'd read it before you'd even managed to speak.

"It seems we both have some more learning to do," you whispered.

He smiled, but fatigue left it half-hearted, preventing it from reaching his eyes. "We've learned a lot from each other. I'd love to debate the topics with you someday. Another night. When things are a little better."

"Have you read Chester?"

Shaking his head, he glanced down toward papers that held no clues. "I don't have time to read anymore books right now."

"It's less philosophical." You pushed a book across the table from him, a shiny new cover greeting his weary eyes.

You left him after that, but his eyes couldn't focus on the crumpled papers, continually smearing his inked drawings. Before he called it a night, he reached across the table, pulling the book you'd offered into his lap.

A Guide to the Difficult by Chester. "Sounds Muggle," he mumbled, chuckling at the title. It was a stress self-help book.

As he flipped through the first few pages, he found handwriting scrawled on a blank page.

Malfoy,

I can't help with whatever dilemma you're facing, but perhaps this will help you manage your decision.

Stay safe.

-(Y/n)

The margins were annotated with your personal suggestions.

He knew this meant something, too. Another message. But fatigue had curled around shoulders, and he was far too exhausted to figure out what you were trying to say.

Instead, he followed your first suggestion, doing a deep breathing exercise for a few minutes before his head hit the pillow. Maybe he was imagining it, but when he woke up the next morning, he already felt a little better.

Just maybe, like Delias Aetherius, he'd live to tell his tale.

And he did.

The cabinet was completed. Dumbledore was killed. The world was burning. Potter had vanished. And Draco was alive.

But the war wasn't over yet. In fact, it had only just begun.