The Failed Education of One Draco Malfoy

Cells and Escape Routes

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.

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Wizards were on the run. Families were in hiding. Pureblood relatives were torn apart trying to protect lives and images. Your family wasn't spared.

Although you weren't an active member of the resistance, enough reading had taught you not to support genocidal maniacs. When your uncle, desperate to save his family, advocated for you to get a tattoo, all hell broke loose.

Of course, you refused. Of course, your parents supported you. Who else would have encouraged your peculiar reading habits? Introduced you to Burbage or Chester? Of course, your uncle, ever the dramatist, derived from this that you were the most villainous member of the family, that you'd brainwashed your parents with the horrendous books.

The only solution he saw to protect your parents from you and to save the family's crumbling image was to report you. Sacrifice the sheep to protect the flock. And that's exactly what he did.

They came in a whirl of dark cloaks and haunting masks. In hindsight, the stories would probably never do the Death Eater's unsettling appearances justice. However, that didn't matter much to you at the time. You were certain to die there, boxed in and threatened with malicious curses. But they didn't kill you. Instead, they yanked you close, apparating back to a dark, unfortunate looking room. You could still imagine your mother's screams as they whisked you away. Hopefully, your family would be spared.

There were no books in the cramped room they kept you in. Although it wasn't particularly pertinent, at least a book would help partially distract you from the residual pain pounding in your chest. The Unforgivables were far from easy to recover from. But a book, the gift of another world, that would have saved you.

Unfortunately, another world would never come.

Questions were asked regarding information about the Order, nothing you knew anything about, of course. Just because you were a moral Slytherin didn't mean Potter and his merry band of chaos trusted you with any information. But that failed to satisfy the Death Eaters, who threw spells at you until your voice was destroyed by the screams. Only then were they satisfied. For the time being.

Laying on the dirt floor, you waited for the meager portion of rations that would come shoved through the cell bars. Although food was scarce, it was provided. Life was survivable, undoubtedly because they didn't want you dead yet, not because they were going to let you live.

You tried to think back to old worlds and ancient civilizations, but the only thing you could come up with was Chester's stress mantra. Had Malfoy survived? Surely he had. But even you'd heard the rumors about the tattoo; a mark on his soul at what cost?

At first you hadn't cared for him. Who would? Everyone knew him as a wealthy, obnoxious prick. But you noticed the way books from the shelves you perused would go missing a few days later, the way you'd see Malfoy coming and going from the library with old novels and furrowed brows. You realized he may have been different from what you believed.

Pansy was the first to mention it. In between swipes of her lipstick she asked, "What do you think of Draco?"

"Oh..." What did you think of Draco? "He seems intelligent." Apparently you thought him to be intelligent.