Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Draco learned in school that omegas were spe­cial, though his fam­ily avoided the sub­ject. Magic flows through con­nec­tions be­tween peo­ple. Omegas serve as con­duits for mag­i­cal power. 

A sub­par al­pha be­comes a mas­ter with an omega at their side. The old tales claim Mer­lin was a medi­ocre wiz­ard who re­lied on his omega chil­dren to mag­nify his abil­i­ties. No al­pha has their own magic. They need an omega.

Omegas form the foun­da­tion of an al­pha’s strength.

But, for rea­sons he can­not un­der­stand, Draco is un­ser­vice­able as an omega. The Dark Lord’s regime found no use for him. Draco’s fears about that were left un­founded. The Death Eaters barely glanced his way.

Draco fights the urge to ask his fa­ther out­right if he’s de­fec­tive. Omegas wield im­mense power as mag­i­cal sources, cre­at­ing magic to be trans­ferred to al­phas. Their magic, their de­vo­tion, their love is the most pow­er­ful force in the Wiz­ard­ing World.

Yet, no one wants to love Draco.

Five years af­ter the war, Draco is on his way back to Azk­a­ban af­ter vi­o­lat­ing his pa­role.

Goyle is now Draco’s so­lic­i­tor. The bum­bling fool is Draco’s only de­fence against a life sen­tence. That’s a ter­ri­fy­ing thought.

“Draco—” Greg starts. What­ever he planned to say dies on his lips. Draco stares at his hands and re­fuses to meet Greg’s eyes un­til his name is re­peated. Greg sounds much gen­tler when he tries again. “Draco…”

“Where were you?” Draco asks. They were sup­posed to meet hours ago and Greg is late. 

“Had a hear­ing,” Greg elab­o­rates, though that ex­plains noth­ing.

Draco arches a brow. Lu­cius funded Goyle’s en­tire le­gal ed­u­ca­tion. Greg only grad­u­ated two years ago, and he’s shit at prac­tis­ing law. The thought that he might have other clients never crossed Draco’s mind. Who else would hire him?

“I’ve got a good so­lic­i­tor, I’ll prob­a­bly get off,” Greg con­tin­ues dryly.

It takes Draco a minute to get it. Goyle could be jok­ing, but he very well might not be. Draco de­cides he doesn’t want to know.

“If you weren’t stum­bling around the red light dis­trict, maybe you’d re­mem­ber your job,” Draco says, speak­ing di­rectly into the lit­tle red phone to en­sure Greg hears him. Greg, a weak and pa­thetic beta, flinches. He always looks down­right skit­tish around Mug­gle tech­nol­ogy. “Your only job, which I pay you very well for, is keep­ing me out of Azk­a­ban.”

“You could pay me bet­ter.”

Draco glares.

“Vi­o­lent crimes aren’t my spe­cial­ity.” Greg shifts un­com­fort­ably, his face pinched like he’s swal­low­ing vine­gar. “Draco, I know un­der­neath it all, you’re ac­tu­ally qui—” 

The phone cracks against the desk with enough force to rat­tle the glass di­vider be­tween them. Draco doesn’t need to hear the end of that sen­tence. If he wanted to be preached at, he could talk to Pansy. Or Nar­cissa. Or any­body.

“This—” Greg’s voice crack­les, and Draco can still hear him clearly from where the re­ceiver lies on the desk. “This is ex­actly what the Wiz­eng­amot hates about you. Why can’t you show them what they want to see?”

Draco snatches up the phone again, his voice heavy with bit­ter­ness. “The omega? You want me to pa­rade around as some help­less, al­pha-starved weak­ling?” 

Greg’s face is strained with frus­tra­tion. “Not ex­actly! An omega pushed to their limit! How else could an al­pha like Dolo­hov end up dead?”

Draco scoffs, fin­ger­tips press­ing white against the plas­tic red phone. “So now I’m sup­posed to grovel? Beg their for­give­ness be­cause my bi­ol­ogy made me do it?” 

“Well?” Greg asks, wav­ing his hands the­atri­cally. “Why else would you do it?”

Draco rolls his eyes.

“I still think we have some­thing in your re­la­tion­ship with Nar­cissa—”

“Ugh, Goyle, please.” Draco leans his head back and stares at the ceil­ing. “Fuck off, please.”

“Did you kill Dolo­hov for sport?” Greg asks flatly. “Be­cause if that’s your de­fence, I can’t fuck­ing help you. En­joy find­ing some des­per­ate bas­tard to mate with in Azk­a­ban. Save your­self some an­guish and get on your knees for the first taker.”

Draco doesn’t be­lieve he mur­dered Dolo­hov in cold blood, but he’s of­fended that Greg Goyle doesn’t think he has it in him. And he doesn’t want the Wiz­eng­amot know­ing about his pa­thetic with­drawal symp­toms. No­body in that lot will buy Greg’s ar­gu­ment that crim­i­nal ac­tiv­ity stems from a lack of al­pha at­ten­tion.

“Why not just take my con­fes­sion and throw me in Azk­a­ban now?” Draco snaps. “Or bet­ter yet, leave me here to rot?”

Greg winces. “You pose a threat to the statute of se­cu­rity here.” This is true. “The pros­e­cu­tion’s filed no­tice that you’re…” His face con­torts like he’s tast­ing sour when he ex­pected sweet.

“Oh, come on, spit it out al­ready, you cow­ard.”

“De­truit,” Greg whis­pers, though the guards here wouldn’t un­der­stand the term. “Tell me it isn’t true.”

Greg is us­ing the technical term for a re­jected omega. The magic build­ing up in­side Draco is driv­ing him mad. As an omega, he can’t chan­nel most of the magic he pro­duces, so even­tu­ally it’ll tar­get his brain. An­other three years like this, and he’d de­stroy half the B-block where he’s cur­rently im­pris­oned.

“Why the hell’d you do it any­way?” Greg asks, lean­ing back in his chair. “The pic­tures were bril­liant, though. That Mug­gle gun… in­spired, re­ally.”

Greg likes the gory de­tails. Draco ig­nores him.

“When’s the Min­istry send­ing some­one to get me out?”

Hermione Granger is the min­istry lackey. She comes to col­lect him later that week.

Draco isn’t sur­prised to see her—Granger is al­ways where he least wants to see her—but his mother is an­other mat­ter en­tirely. What shocks him most is Greg stand­ing there be­side them both, look­ing bored, but on time and in dress robes. Mir­a­cles do hap­pen, ap­par­ently.

Nar­cissa be­gins the con­ver­sa­tion. “Do you know that you’re bleed­ing?”

It hap­pened yes­ter­day morn­ing, and the cut must have re­opened. Draco doesn’t re­mem­ber the in­ci­dent at all—which, as Greg so lov­ingly pointed out, means his ex­cess magic is fry­ing what’s left of his brain.

“He got him­self beaten up like an id­iot,” Greg laughs. “Some thug nicked our pre­cious Draco’s li­brary books.”

“—I got them back!” Draco in­sists.

“You got your­self a real nice sou­venir there,” Greg chuck­les. He ges­tures to the gash on Draco’s cheek, cov­ered by gauze. “What a pretty omega.”

Draco swats his hand away, scowl­ing.

Granger tuts, re­mind­ing Draco that she’s there. “We’ll get you to St. Mungo’s soon enough, Mal­foy.” She turns to Greg. “Why didn’t you get him out sooner? A Wixen pris­oner can be trans­ferred to Min­istry cus­tody by their so­lic­i­tor if you reg­is­ter the trans­fer and con­fund the Mug­gle war­den. It’s per­fectly al­lowed.”

“Do you think I can con­fund any­body? My charms are shit,” Greg tells her. “Be­sides, it does Dray good to rot here and get his head on straight.”

“Oh, what a so­lic­i­tor this is! Leav­ing me to mar­i­nate!” Draco ex­claims, un­able to help him­self from join­ing in the ban­ter.

“You could’ve taken a Min­istry es­cort,” Granger says, miss­ing the sar­casm en­tirely.

“He made so many friends here, though,” Greg says, mo­tion­ing again to the big cut on Draco’s face.

Greg, ever the drama queen, bick­ers with Granger all through Draco’s brief stint at St. Mungo’s and his sub­se­quent re­turn to house ar­rest. Draco stops lis­ten­ing some­where be­tween “cler­i­cal er­ror” and “un­fore­seen cir­cum­stances.”

Nar­cissa’s pres­ence baf­fles him. She of­fers no warmth, only clin­i­cal de­tach­ment. When Draco first pre­sented, she had been quick with af­fec­tion, a haven for him to chan­nel his magic. Now she avoids touch en­tirely, with­draw­ing from both him and Lu­cius. Draco gave up try­ing to un­der­stand it long ago. 

With­out reg­u­lar con­tact with an omega, Nar­cissa likely strug­gles to per­form even the sim­plest spells.

“Rose gar­den…” Draco mum­bles, the words slug­gish and heavy. He’s slumped in a chair at the win­dow. Be­yond the glass, there’s noth­ing but neatly trimmed hedges as far as he can see.

Granger’s hand lands on his shoul­der, star­tling him enough that her name slips his mind en­tirely. 

“Love­g­ood, could you pass me that blan­ket?” Draco asks, pic­tur­ing the only girl he’s ever seen lin­ger­ing in the Manor.

Granger—be­cause she is Granger, not Looney Love­g­ood—frowns.

He takes the blan­ket from her, not re­mem­ber­ing why he even wanted it.

“How have the past three days been?” Granger asks, frown­ing a lit­tle. “It’s hard to get a read from Goyle.”

Three days. Draco left the Lon­don prison three days ago?

It’s get­ting worse.

“Do you see a rose gar­den?” Granger asks, fol­low­ing Draco’s gaze out the win­dow.

Draco squints at the win­dow, forc­ing his eyes to fo­cus. There’s noth­ing out there but those bloody hedges, trimmed to death, and yet he could’ve sworn—he knows he saw roses.

“Why are you here any­way?” Draco asks her.

“I’m a pub­lic ad­vo­cate. I work with de­fen­dants and pris­on­ers,” Granger says. “I was as­signed be­cause your case is sen­si­tive.”

“I have a so­lic­i­tor,” Draco says, ges­tur­ing vaguely to Greg, who was stand­ing by the hearth, but now isn’t.

Granger gets his mean­ing any­way. “He’s been sus­pended too many times. I have to su­per­vise.”

Draco zones out into the hedges again.

Draco goes to Azk­a­ban the fol­low­ing week be­cause he was al­ready plan­ning it. Draco and his mother are per­mit­ted two vis­its with Lu­cius ev­ery six months.

“A fun lit­tle tour of your new ac­com­mo­da­tions?” Greg asks, scrib­bling through the sign-in pa­per­work while some sour-faced Au­ror watches like a hawk.

“Save it, I’m not in the mood,” Draco says.

Some­thing in his ex­pres­sion must con­vince Greg that he’s be­ing hon­est, be­cause he shuts up.

“This is filled out wrong,” the Au­ror tells Greg, hand­ing back the pa­per­work.

“Mer­lin’s beard,” Draco says, snatch­ing the pa­per­work from Greg be­fore he can make it worse. He ex­am­ines it but can’t spot any er­rors apart from Greg’s atro­cious hand­writ­ing.

Greg leans over and crosses out some­thing in­nocu­ous, and then they’re al­lowed to see Lu­cius.

Lu­cius looks pale and sick when they ar­rive, al­ready speak­ing to his wife. They stand two feet apart on op­po­site sides of the cell. Narcissa doesn’t touch him, just as she never touches Draco. She doesn’t col­lect any magic, though she’s per­fectly within her rights to. It’s im­pos­si­ble to un­der­stand.

Greg claps his big hands to­gether loudly. “Have we dis­cussed Draco’s re­cent ca­reer ac­com­plish­ments?”

Lu­cius glares, but he turns to Greg with­out so much as a glance in Draco’s di­rec­tion. For what­ever rea­son, Lu­cius has al­ways taken Greg se­ri­ously and trusted his judg­ment. They’re both al­co­holic de­viants, so per­haps that ex­plains the kin­ship.

“Is there a trial strat­egy in place?” Lu­cius in­quires of Greg.

Greg turns to Nar­cissa. “It would help if you were there look­ing like a lov­ing, sup­port­ive al­pha mother, who wouldn’t have a de­truit omega son.”

Draco and Lu­cius ex­change a glance. They know that would be im­pos­si­ble, with the frosty way Nar­cissa con­ducts her­self as the fam­ily al­pha.

“For how long?” Nar­cissa asks.

“Fif­teen min­utes or so?” Draco in­ter­rupts when Greg opens his mouth. “Is that doable?”

“More like ten, even,” Greg says, shrug­ging.

“Some ex­cel­lent sup­port in this fam­ily, as al­ways,” Lu­cius com­ments.

Nar­cissa piv­ots sharply. Greg scram­bles af­ter her, nat­ter­ing on about what­ever te­dious le­gal bol­locks needs sort­ing. Draco mostly keeps Greg on the pay­roll for this ex­act rea­son: keep­ing his mother en­gaged.

Even the guards look shocked, star­ing at Nar­cissa’s re­treat­ing back. Though Draco and his fa­ther are crim­i­nals, they are still omegas. It’s strange, to other peo­ple, that she re­fuses to touch them.

Draco has never dis­cussed his dy­namic with his fa­ther, though their sto­ries mir­ror each other. Af­ter seven years of avoid­ing the topic, it has be­come in­creas­ingly un­com­fort­able when­ever it is nudged. 

Fi­nally, Lu­cius says, with a sig­na­ture sneer, “You look aw­ful.” 

That’s a bit hyp­o­crit­i­cal for Draco’s taste. “There’s not a lot I can do about it, is there?” 

He means it to sound bit­ter and ac­cusatory, but it comes out as a gen­uine ques­tion. Stand­ing in his fa­ther’s cell, soon to be iden­ti­cal to his own, makes main­tain­ing the per­for­mance of Draco’s per­son­al­ity ex­haust­ing.

Lu­cius scoffs. “Find an al­pha. I’m sure Goyle could ar­range some­thing for you.” 

Draco would love to scream. Of course, he should have an al­pha. Un­for­tu­nately, his chances of find­ing some­one suit­able are shit. Even if by some mir­a­cle things worked out some­how, some­way, with some­body, it’s laugh­able that Lu­cius thinks it would help. His fa­ther’s been in with­drawal for years. De­spite mar­ry­ing the ideal pure­blood al­pha witch, he still suf­fers.

Lu­cius is not de­truit, a small voice in Draco’s head re­minds him. Lu­cius is not clin­i­cally in­sane from his with­drawal. 

Draco main­tains in­tense eye con­tact, hop­ing it will be enough to prompt Lu­cius to ad­dress the ele­phant in the room. It doesn’t work.

“Do you feel bet­ter with your al­pha?” 

“You have to keep the an­i­mal in check, Draco.” 

In all his life, Draco has never as­so­ci­ated his omega with an an­i­mal. It’s not some­thing he’s proud of, to be cer­tain, but the omega traits have al­ways been a part of him. Not some­thing sep­a­rate. Not an an­i­mal. 

Ab­surdly and em­bar­rass­ingly, this com­ment makes Draco’s eyes sting. Draco craves af­fec­tion and ap­proval as much as any­one. Lu­cius is usu­ally more un­der­stand­ing. Out of all the id­iots he has en­coun­tered in the past few days, Draco as­sumed his fa­ther would read be­tween the lines of the bro­ken-pa­role-drug-dealer story.

Draco is more up­set that his fool­ish tears are such a typ­i­cal omega trait.

Lu­cius is do­ing a re­mark­able job of ig­nor­ing him. “Do you see me cry­ing ev­ery time some­thing goes awry, Draco?” 

No. He doesn’t. 

“Not all omegas are sub­mis­sive fools.” This sug­gests that Draco is one. “Not all of us need an al­pha tuck­ing us in at night.” An­other dig meant for him. “And no omega re­quires an al­pha to wield magic.” That much is un­de­ni­able. “We are the most pow­er­ful of Wiz­ards. Our only weak­ness is our­selves.”

So, the so­lu­tion is con­stant in­com­plete­ness. The an­swer is long­ing glances at ev­ery al­pha on the streets. He’s meant to em­brace his mag­i­cal power, even though he knows it will un­ravel his mind.

“I’m not en­joy­ing the trade-off.” 

For a fleet­ing sec­ond, Lu­cius’s ex­pres­sion soft­ens. Just as fast, his usual poise re­turns. “Ask Goyle if you can visit when you’re sent to Azk­a­ban per­ma­nently.”

Lu­cius doesn’t pre­tend that Draco won’t soon be in his own cell. For that, Draco is grate­ful.

The next two weeks are a count­down of bit­ter tor­ture un­til his trial. It will be a farce. Draco will plead guilty and be sent to City Hold­ing for one night. Af­ter­ward, Greg will have the du­bi­ous hon­our of de­liv­er­ing a de­ranged omega to an Azk­a­ban cell and seal­ing the door for good.

The cav­ernous halls of Mal­foy Manor stay un­bear­ably quiet, empty save for the echo­ing foot­steps of two in­suf­fer­able in­di­vid­u­als. His mother put­ters with end­less cups of tea while that oaf Goyle lum­bers through rooms like a lost troll. Nei­ther of­fers good con­ver­sa­tion.

Draco talks to the por­traits more of­ten than not, if only be­cause their sneer­ing in­sults show some cre­ativ­ity. He can prac­ti­cally feel the mad­ness creep­ing in at the edges. 

Greg went to some arbitration meeting recently, and he as­sures Draco that he is legally al­lowed to leave the Manor, as long as he doesn’t leave the coun­try, and shows up to his trial in a few weeks.

He ap­pa­rates be­yond the wards to Pansy’s build­ing, where she spots him from her bal­cony the mo­ment he ma­te­ri­al­izes in the al­ley be­low and waves him up­stairs.

He sits awk­wardly across from her, mir­ror­ing ev­ery un­com­fort­able con­ver­sa­tion he’s ever en­dured with his par­ents. She sips whiskey while he pours him­self a drink with­out ask­ing.

“Slow down,” she cau­tions. “You’re close to your heat.” 

That com­ment throws him a lit­tle. “What if I’d never fuck you in a mil­lion years, with or with­out heat?” 

She tilts her head to the side. This has been a large point of con­tention for them over the years. “Wouldn’t fuck me again, with or with­out heat.” 

Draco’s face heats up, which is ex­actly what she wants. Draco’s con­ver­sa­tions with his friends al­ways have a cer­tain sharp edge.

“I’m not go­ing into heat,” Draco says hon­estly. He sniffs the air, de­tect­ing no trace of the sugar-sweet omega scent that would in­di­cate it. He frowns into his glass, try­ing to find his place in the con­ver­sa­tion. 

Pansy looks a lit­tle con­fused. “How can I help you, Draco?” 

Draco sighs, feel­ing his blush travel down his neck. “I’m go­ing to Azk­a­ban. I’m in with­drawal. My only chance is the bite.” 

A bond­ing bite means own­er­ship. Pansy’s a beta, so the magic trans­fer would be weak, but bet­ter than noth­ing. At least it would be vis­i­ble—pro­tec­tion in prison and some­thing for his weak omega mind to cling to dur­ing with­drawal. Draco sus­pects it’s the rea­son his fa­ther hasn’t gone de­truit.

“You’d only be half alive,” Pansy says, tak­ing a slow sip. “I’m not plan­ning to marry you. We don’t have any sort of real re­la­tion­ship.” She hes­i­tates. “And… you don’t want a beta.” 

“I know.” 

“Go home. Heats are so ar­bi­trary these days. You don’t need me.” She pities him. “I’m not go­ing to bite you. Mer­lin.” 

“I’m not in heat!” 

“Sorry. Your magic is so over­whelm­ing, even I can sense it.” Her nose wrin­kles, which is odd. Be­tas shouldn’t re­act this strongly to his scent. “I don’t un­der­stand your mother. You’re suf­fo­cat­ing un­der a blan­ket of magic, and you’re not even in pre-heat, so you say. How much magic do you have? Don’t al­phas crave power like yours?”

No­body un­der­stands what Nar­cissa wants. Hear­ing Pansy re­peat the same plat­i­tudes only sharp­ens his ir­ri­ta­tion. “If you know of any al­phas with such a mag­i­cal re­quire­ment, tell them to send me an owl,” Draco says, voice re­turn­ing to a sar­cas­tic drawl.

“Hmm, let me count the al­phas with ex­tra­or­di­nary power re­serves that I know of,” Pansy hums. She gets an odd glint in her eye. “The Dark Lord and his fol­low­ers are gone, save for Dolo­hov, whom you re­cently killed—”

“—Al­legedly,” Draco tries.

“—Al­legedly,” Pansy re­peats, with a roll of her kohl-rimmed eyes. “Blaise told me that An­dromeda Black is an al­pha.”

“Per­fect! A third Black sis­ter to per­ma­nently dam­age my psy­che,” Draco says. He fur­rows his brow. “How would Blaise know that any­way?”

“The Yax­ley sis­ters,” Pansy says, as if it’s ob­vi­ous. Draco hasn’t heard from ei­ther of them in years, not since be­fore the war. But Pansy doesn’t act like that’s news, so maybe Draco missed Blaise’s lat­est gos­sip—what with go­ing in­sane and all. Pansy con­tin­ues, “…and there’s al­ways Pot­ter.”

“Ex­cuse me? Aren’t I in­com­pat­i­ble with be­tas?”

It’s eas­ier to fix­ate on that in­stead of the Harry Pot­ter of it all. Pansy’s try­ing to pro­voke him, but he’s not fall­ing into that trap.

“Pot­ter isn’t a beta,” Pansy says.

“What are you talk­ing about?” Draco is not that screwed up in the head, not yet. He went to school with Pot­ter and was sin­gu­larly fo­cused on him for years. Pot­ter is a beta.

“You know, if you’re go­ing to live abroad, you should at least read the Prophet,” she tells him. “Ask Greg about it. He got dis­barred, the first time, for scream­ing about this at the Hog’s Head with Aber­forth.”

“I re­mem­ber,” Draco snaps. “That was about dis­or­derly con­duct.”

“He was get­ting in fights with lo­cals about our saviour,” Pansy says. “Ev­ery­body thought he was a beta, but some­how, af­ter he killed the Dark Lord, it came out he was an al­pha. Bas­tard must have been tak­ing sup­pres­sants.”

Draco’s omega thrums with a weird, rest­less need. He still doesn’t be­lieve it. It’s the kind of thing that Pansy would make up, to wind Draco up on pur­pose. It doesn’t make sense that Pot­ter wouldn’t want to be an al­pha.

“How is Greg these days?” 

“Com­plete rub­bish,” Draco of­fers.

“He’s do­ing his best for you,” Pansy says, though the cor­ners of her mouth twitch. Greg’s in­com­pe­tence never fails to amuse her. 

“He’s the finest so­lic­i­tor I can af­ford af­ter the Min­istry bled me dry.”

“Well, you’re his only client. Must be nice hav­ing his un­di­vided fo­cus.” 

Draco re­mem­bers be­ing in­censed at the thought that he might not be Greg’s only client. He doesn’t need to tell Pansy that, ob­vi­ously. “He han­dled his own di­vorce, so tech­ni­cally I’m not his only client,” Draco shoots back, grin­ning.

They laugh, and the sound set­tles some­thing in him. He loves Pansy. Misses her, even. Time with her qui­ets his omega, that rest­less thing in­side him al­ways claw­ing for at­ten­tion. He lingers in her easy com­pan­ion­ship, rel­ish­ing it, if just for a few hours.

Just be­fore he floos back to the Manor, Draco sab­o­tages the mo­ment. 

“If I die in Azk­a­ban, that’s your fault,” he says. It’s meant to be a joke. 

“You won’t.” Pansy frowns. “You’re not Ce­leste, you know.”

Bit­ter, hot rage boils in Draco’s throat. He wants to spit some­thing truly vile at Pansy just for men­tion­ing Ce­leste Yax­ley’s name. She’s the only de­truit omega he’s ever known, and Pansy knows ex­actly how much her de­scent into mad­ness un­set­tled him.

He wants to lean over her bal­cony and scream, “I am de­truit!” for all of Wiz­ard­ing Lon­don to hear. Maybe it’s a shred of self-con­trol, his last des­per­ate grip on san­ity, that keeps him quiet.

Granger drags him to the Min­istry on trial day, mut­ter­ing some­thing about Goyle show­ing up hun­gover—as if that’s news. The dis­ap­proval etched across her face is al­most amus­ing, re­ally; ap­par­ently, his so­lic­i­tor’s ques­tion­able life choices of­fend her del­i­cate sen­si­bil­i­ties.

“It’s fine,” Draco says, cut­ting her off be­fore she can start. He feels ea­ger to re­as­sure her, for some rea­son. “Greg ac­tu­ally func­tions bet­ter when he’s half-cut. Some­thing about the al­co­hol loosens what­ever’s stuck in his skull.”

Granger doesn’t find that funny.

Draco looks worse than his fa­ther, though he wouldn’t ad­mit it. Granger, of course, no­tices. She hands him a stick of con­cealer when they round the cor­ner to the court­room.

Dis­ori­ent­ing dreams kept him awake all night. He woke hy­per­ven­ti­lat­ing, the metal­lic tang of his dis­tress cling­ing to him. To­day, his skin stretches tight over the sharp an­gles of his face, flesh sink­ing into vi­o­let smudges be­neath his eyes. His crisp dress robes only em­pha­size the di­shev­elled state. Loose threads fray at the sleeves, ev­i­dence of a com­mon omegan ner­vous habit. Draco keeps pick­ing at it idly. 

“Hey, what’d I miss?” Greg asks, drop­ping into the seat be­side Draco.

“Oh, noth­ing,” Draco says, step­ping in be­fore Granger can start an out­raged rant. “Just the usual. Just pray­ing I don’t get my­self killed in a cell be­fore au­tumn.”

“Well, if that’s all,” Greg snorts.

His brief­case un­latches, send­ing pa­pers fly­ing all over the floor and into the mid­dle of the Wiz­eng­amot court­room.

Granger sighs and moves into Greg’s seat while they watch him bum­ble around gath­er­ing the pa­pers. Draco no­tices half of them are blank. Greg strug­gles to pick them all up quickly, his move­ments ham­pered by tight trousers. The spec­ta­cle would be amus­ing if not for the cir­cum­stances.

“It’s not a full crim­i­nal ses­sion. Dolo­hov wasn’t well-liked, and that could work in your favour. You’ll have ten Wiz­eng­amot mem­bers de­cid­ing your fate.” Granger leans in so that Draco can hear her when her voice pitches to a whis­per. “They’ll ar­gue that you’re de­truit and too dan­ger­ous for so­ci­ety.”

In spite of ev­ery­thing, Draco feels proud that peo­ple find him to be too dan­ger­ous.

Gre­gory Goyle’s bril­liant strat­egy to lessen Draco’s sen­tence proves hu­mil­i­at­ing. He calls a healer to the stand, who ex­plains to the court­room that Draco’s con­di­tion stems from iso­la­tion—no pack, no scent-mark­ing, no sta­bi­liz­ing touches. His magic re­mains in­tact while his mind de­te­ri­o­rates. It’s the op­po­site for al­phas, who keep their men­tal clar­ity but can’t gen­er­ate magic.

Go­ing di­rectly against his client’s wishes might be ex­cus­able if it ac­tu­ally proved to re­duce Draco’s sen­tence. But with prison now in­evitable, per­haps the sen­tence even ex­tended, this pageantry will achieve noth­ing.

Nar­cissa ar­rives at the next re­cess, pre­pared to per­form her ten min­utes of ma­ter­nal sup­port.

“In­ter­est­ing strat­egy that Mr. Goyle has,” she says coolly. She ev­i­dently saw the end of the healer’s speech on the wit­ness stand.

Draco only tuts, lean­ing his head to the side to crack his neck.

“Noth­ing to say on the mat­ter?”

“Goyle’s very good,” Draco says au­to­mat­i­cally. He’s said it for years.

Granger oc­cu­pies the bench be­hind Draco through­out the trial, her knuck­les whiten­ing where she grips the wood. She looks in­creas­ingly fran­tic.

“Don’t you have some­where else to be?” Greg asks her when they set­tle back in. “I’m se­ri­ous!” he in­sists against her with­er­ing stare. “Shouldn’t you be off cham­pi­oning some other de­fence­less pris­oner?”

“Not a pris­oner yet,” Draco re­minds him.

“And I’m not drunk, but I will be later,” Greg says. “See how that works?”

Greg gets called to the stand to give the High In­quisi­tor some­thing or other; Draco doesn’t re­ally care.

“He is ter­ri­ble,” Granger sniffs un­der her breath.

“Ob­vi­ously,” Draco says. “But he’d walk through fire for me, al­beit poorly. What more could I ask for in a so­lic­i­tor?”

“In­tel­li­gence?” Granger of­fers. “So­bri­ety?”

Draco doesn’t have to re­spond be­cause Greg starts talk­ing again. He paints a lovely, com­pletely un­true pic­ture of Draco as some piti­ful omega ha­rassed by a big, bad al­pha. He was so ter­ri­fied and wounded that he snapped and shot Dolo­hov in the face for no rea­son.

It takes great ef­fort not to roll his eyes.

No sur­prise, the Dolo­hovs have hired a sharper so­lic­i­tor. The man is wear­ing scent block­ers, but Draco can tell he’s an al­pha. His bi­cep is the size of Draco’s head, and he has the ugly face of a bull­dog.

He’s done his re­search. He de­scribes Draco’s five-year stint ped­dling Mug­gle drugs un­der Dolo­hov’s em­ploy per­fectly.

Nar­cissa arches a sin­gle per­fect eye­brow at the rev­e­la­tion.

Greg looks fu­ri­ous, which is rich com­ing from him. As if he has any moral high ground to stand on. It’s not like Greg’s a paragon of virtue.

He leans in, his voice a sharp whis­per. “Thanks for leav­ing noth­ing out, Draco.” 

He says it as if bet­ter prepa­ra­tion would have made a dif­fer­ence.

Greg and Nar­cissa had been per­fectly con­tent pock­et­ing his checks with­out ask­ing ques­tions. But now, at trial, they’re sud­denly scan­dal­ized that he hasn’t been du­ti­fully shuf­fling pa­pers at Gringotts all this time. Like ei­ther of them ac­tu­ally cared where the money came from!

They should have known bet­ter. Peo­ple al­ways choose money over pride, even omegas.

Draco steps onto the wit­ness stand. Dolo­hov’s so­lic­i­tor leans for­ward, his tone clipped. “Re­lay the events ex­actly as they hap­pened.”

“It’s sim­ple,” Draco says, be­cause it should be. “I col­lect the drugs in Lon­don, pack them in a suit­case. I con­fund the se­cu­rity of­fi­cers. I board the plane to Mos­cow, de­liver the case to—” his voice stut­ters.

“To whom, Mr. Mal­foy?”

The mem­ory flick­ers into a flash of a tan trench coat and wide brown eyes. “A Mug­gle,” he says.

The bull­dog’s scowl deep­ens. “Ex­plain how you dropped the suit­case in Mos­cow af­ter the mur­der of An­tonin Dolo­hov in Lon­don that same day.”

The story doesn’t add up, and Draco knows it. He boarded that plane with the drugs. He re­mem­bers the re­turn trip, hand­ing the empty case to some bearded bloke who looked alarm­ingly like Dum­b­le­dore.

“I thought it was a Mug­gle…” Draco’s throat tight­ens, “but it was Dolo­hov.”

Draco can’t re­call a bloody thing. He woke cov­ered in blood with a man­gled corpse un­der­neath him, face clawed to pieces and un­rec­og­niz­able. Ex­plain­ing his frac­tured mem­o­ries on the stand would be point­less. No­body here would be­lieve he has fugue states any­way, ex­cept maybe Greg, and what good would that do?

Draco’s lungs refuse to fill. Panic crawls up his throat. He counts his fin­gers to en­sure there are ten. Some­how, he counts twelve.

“Did you know An­tonin Dolo­hov prior to your em­ploy­ment within his drug car­tel?”

“Yes.” Nine fin­gers.

“Then how did you fail to rec­og­nize him?” The bull­dog steps closer.

Draco’s throat tight­ens, his tongue sud­denly too thick to form proper words. “I can’t ex­plain it,” he man­ages. Fear prick­les at the back of his neck. “I walked into that ware­house like it was any other job. Then, the bas­tard dis­armed me; that’s when I knew he was a wiz­ard. The drugs were gone. He said they’d never ar­rived.”

The High In­quisi­tor raises a hand, si­lenc­ing Dolo­hov’s so­lic­i­tor. “Mr. Mal­foy, how did you come to en­gage in this em­ploy­ment?”

Draco doesn’t know. Those mem­o­ries are gone. He wakes, fol­lows in­struc­tions, and col­lects plane tick­ets. That’s all. “Af­ter the war.”

“Your Hon­our, he is be­ing un­truth­ful.”

Draco stares blankly un­til the High In­quisi­tor’s voice slices through the si­lence. “You swore an oath to re­count events truth­fully.”

Did he take an oath?

He doesn’t re­mem­ber an oath. He doesn’t re­mem­ber walk­ing to the stand.

An in­vol­un­tary omegan whine tears from Draco’s throat, his dis­tress scent ris­ing sharp and bit­ter. It’s an in­stinc­tive re­sponse, a way to beg for help, to dis­play his com­plete sub­mis­sion.

Nar­cissa re­coils in the crowd, and she stands to slip out the back door. The fa­mil­iar laven­der-and-iron scent of her pres­ence with­draws from the room.

Draco’s omega screams for in­ter­ven­tion, for some­one to step in, but there is no pack here, only cold benches and turned shoul­ders. Even Greg’s fa­mil­iar berg­amot-and-bour­bon scent does noth­ing to soothe him now, not when it’s laced with dis­ap­proval.

“This per­for­mance can­not in­flu­ence the Wiz­eng­amot.” The so­lic­i­tor’s shadow falls over Draco. “Might the court ques­tion whether an omega’s… im­pulses com­pro­mise ob­jec­tiv­ity?”

“Ob­jec­tion!” Greg jerks up­right, fi­nally com­ing to life. “Bad­ger­ing the wit­ness—”

“Over­ruled. Pro­ceed.”

Dolo­hov’s so­lic­i­tor slides pho­to­graphs across the benches. The Wiz­eng­amot reps lean for­ward like hun­gry birds. Dolo­hov’s face is oblit­er­ated in the im­ages. His team re­counts how Draco’s claws tore his body apart. The so­lic­i­tor pauses be­tween each de­tail, let­ting si­lence do the work. Ev­ery de­mented act upon the corpse is cat­a­logued like in­gre­di­ents from a recipe.

It’s bloody in­cred­i­ble that even while traf­fick­ing filthy Mug­gle drugs, Dolo­hov never saw a hand­gun com­ing af­ter dis­arm­ing Draco of his wand.

He prob­a­bly didn’t ex­pect Draco to do the rest ei­ther.

He stares down at the pho­tos of Dolo­hov’s skull and feels ill. He barely re­calls dig­ging into the wound, search­ing for the bul­let, and he has no clue why.

Draco slumps into his chair, numb, and stares at his trem­bling hands. He doesn’t re­mem­ber mov­ing from the stand to this seat be­side Greg. The edges of the room blur, time slip­ping through his fin­gers like smoke.

The High In­quisi­tor ex­hales through his nose. “Have you any­thing to say?”

Draco’s fin­gers twitch. He con­sid­ers reach­ing for Greg to an­chor him­self, but stops. He might vomit. “No.”

Five to ten years in Azk­a­ban. Ef­fec­tive to­mor­row.

Greg is cel­e­brating. It’s a le­nient sen­tence.

Draco stum­bles out of the court­room. A guard’s hand clamps around his arm and steers him into a hold­ing room tucked be­hind the High In­quisi­tor’s bench.

Through the wall, the Wiz­eng­amot mem­bers scat­ter, their voices a dull mur­mur of sat­is­fied chat­ter now that they’ve had their en­ter­tain­ment.

Greg shuf­fles af­ter him, hov­er­ing by the win­dow like some ner­vous guard dog. He’s star­ing out at noth­ing in par­tic­u­lar, clearly try­ing to fig­ure out how to warn Draco about what’s wait­ing for him.

Hermione Granger opens a back door from fur­ther into the cham­ber.

“Con­grat­u­la­tions,” she says.

“What ex­actly hap­pened?” Draco asks the room.

Granger launches into some te­dious ex­pla­na­tion that goes over his head. Greg fi­nally raises a meaty hand to si­lence her.

“No Dementors,” Greg says, grin­ning. “Only ten years, max! That’s prac­ti­cally a gift com­pared to what your fa­ther got. Or my fa­ther, for that mat­ter.”

“Hooray,” Draco says dully.

He got what he ex­pected.

“We’re im­ple­ment­ing Azk­a­ban re­forms,” Granger says. “Co­op­er­ate with the De­part­ment on a project, and you might get le­niency.”

“The De­part­ment?” Draco asks.

Greg leans back in the room’s only chair, hands locked be­hind his head. “Draco doesn’t qual­ify for squat. I checked. Death Eater omegas don’t get spe­cial treat­ment. What the hell would any­body want with him?”

“A lot, you ab­so­lute, dimwit­ted ar­se­hole,” Draco snaps. “I have the Dark Mark. There aren’t many left, and the Min­istry would kill for the chance to dis­sect one.”

And he’s a de­truit omega. The min­istry doesn’t know that for sure yet, but Draco is cer­tain that Granger sus­pects it.

Granger gives a faint smile. She clearly dis­likes Greg and can’t wait to leave. “I’ll be in touch,” she says. “I’ve got to head back to Azk­a­ban. I’ve spent far too much time here, but I am pleased for you, Draco.”

She dis­ap­pears. Greg says noth­ing.

“Well?” Draco asks him, ir­ri­tated.

“I’ll look into it. Maybe you can be a lab rat or—”

“—I don’t want to be a lab rat. How about you keep me out of any and all labs?”

“Well, it’d be nice for you to have a gen­tle sen­tence. I don’t want to visit an omega in the pits of Azk­a­ban, your soul sucked out by the Dementors.”

“You visit my fa­ther all the time.”

Greg’s eyes glaze over. Clearly, his brain has checked out for the day. Draco fol­lows his va­cant stare through the court­room win­dow to find a wisp of a woman on the Dolo­hov side, ab­so­lutely fall­ing apart into a hand­ker­chief.

“The red­head is sexy,” Greg com­ments.

Draco shifts his eyes to a girl with a shock of auburn hair sev­eral rows be­hind the cry­ing woman. He ad­mits, be­grudg­ingly in his mind, that she is at­trac­tive. Or she would be, if Draco were into that sort of thing.

“Not that you’re into that sort of thing,” Greg points out, mir­ror­ing his thoughts ex­actly. Draco sighs. 

“Who’s that cry­ing?” Draco asks Greg.

“Dunno,” Greg mut­ters, though it’s his lit­eral job to know. “Looks like Rus­sian mafia. Dolo­hov’s wife, prob­a­bly.”

Draco stares at her, watch­ing her cry ugly tears. She’s in­con­solable, even in a room full of Wiz­eng­amot mem­bers who are try­ing to make small talk.

“She’s a pretty young omega,” Greg says, tilt­ing his head to the side. “I thought Dolo­hov was an old man.”

Draco can’t pic­ture Dolo­hov; he can only en­vi­sion that hor­ri­ble photo of his face blown off.

The worst part of the whole day has been this, see­ing Dolo­hov’s wife cry­ing into some­one’s chest, af­ter Draco has been es­corted out.

Greg takes Draco’s si­lence for agree­ment. “No mat­ing bite on her ei­ther,” he com­ments. He re­leases a low whis­tle. “Good for old Dolo­hov, I guess. Hot, young, new wife cry­ing at his mur­der trial.”

Draco doesn’t re­spond, and Greg moves to leave him alone in the room. Bas­tard.

“I’ll look into it,” Greg says in­stead of good­bye. He doesn’t spec­ify what he means to look into. He claps Draco on the back hard enough to nearly knock him off bal­ance. “Good luck in there, Dray.”

Draco keeps star­ing at that cry­ing woman. She even­tu­ally stands to leave, only to col­lapse back down into her chair in an­other wave of tears.

The worst part is that Draco doesn’t feel sorry for killing her hus­band. In­stead, he feels bit­terly jeal­ous. Some­one like Dolo­hov had an omega wife who still cares that much for his stupid, ugly arse. Draco doesn’t rec­og­nize that woman at all, so she can’t have been around dur­ing the war. A part of Draco that is en­tirely omega screams in­side him. Why had that bas­tard cho­sen her?

No­body wants an omega who can stom­ach shoot­ing some­one in the head and search­ing for the bul­let to con­ceal the ev­i­dence.

Draco lies in his Min­istry hold­ing cell that night, rest­less as a caged an­i­mal. The al­pha guard watches him with pa­thetic, ner­vous ter­ror, and reeks of it.

The scru­tiny grates on his nerves. As if any omega could stran­gle an al­pha bare­handed, es­pe­cially one tee­ter­ing on de­truit.

He’s fi­nally set­tling deeper onto the thin cot when the door slams open. An­other pris­oner stum­bles in­side.

The guard, who has not of­fered Draco any­thing all night, im­me­di­ately asks the new­comer if he needs any­thing to be com­fort­able. (Pil­low? Blan­ket? Glass of wa­ter?)

Draco grits his teeth, fin­gers twitch­ing against his thighs. He’d been pre­tend­ing to sleep, but the guard’s re­ac­tion is in­fu­ri­at­ing. He has to see who has joined him in the hold­ing cell.

He sits up.

And there, look­ing back at him, is Harry bloody Pot­ter.