Chapter Text
To Name a Thestral
Chapter 1: Aquila the Eurasian Eagle Owl and Aisling the Augurey
September 1999
It was the last time he had to clean the owlery.
The first time Draco Lucius Malfoy, British heir of the Noble House of Malfoy, one of only two remaining male progeny of House Black – and the only pureblood, if you were strict about such things, though Draco could no longer give a fuck – had to physically enter the owlery at Melangell’s Rest, he’d hated it, immediately.
He’d never set foot into the owlery in Hogwarts. He’d always had Artaxerxes, his eagle owl, who knew to come to him. It was the case for all Malfoy owls. So – he’d not been at all prepared for the smell.
How did it manage to be so acidic? It’d lodged into his brain, made his eyes water. He’d been glad for the still-muddy overalls from the sanctuary he’d been handed to wear over his henley, and the similarly borrowed overlarge wellies.
And the crunchy, itchy straw and squelchy, disgusting droppings underfoot, and the sound, and all the loose falling feathers and all the constant movement.
And then he’d been told by Smythe, the sanctuary worker who’d led him to the owlery on Keeper Stirling Summerby’s orders, that while he could use cleaning spells on a spot cleaning basis, the recommendation was still to manually clear the floor, just to ensure that nothing which should be noticed went unnoticed.
Before manually checking the water and food troughs.
And then he would have to individually check each owl – match it to its creature ledger, make notes of any material developments. If possible – he had to check stool sample consistency.
Draco had immediately decided it was not possible. Even if the bloody owl literally shit on his head such that it was undeniable which owl the stool belonged to, he wasn’t about to track stool samples.
The first morning he’d spent there had been a disaster. He’d almost been in tears by the end of it – it hadn’t so much been the physical exertion, though he’d not been used to that, either (he couldn’t believe that he, the Malfoy heir, was doing manual labour – he’d probably dissociated, the surreality too much to process), but the smell, which got to his eyes, into his hair, and the incessant, maddening, flapping and hooting.
There’d been one fucking owl in particular who had the most echoing, long-drawn, undeniable hoots. And another which delighted in pecking at Draco until he drew blood – on his face or on his hands, it wasn’t picky.
Owl #34 – a damned Eurasian eagle owl – unreasonably large and with piercing orange eyes. It was easy to remember its stupid face.
Draco had considered whether he could claim self-defence if he murdered the blasted thing.
He’d tried not to think of what Gryffindors would say, would taunt and jeer, if they ever saw him in the position he’d been in.
What a horror of circumstances.
Though, of course – there could’ve been Azkaban, a small voice in his mind had reminded him. It’d immediately sobered him up.
And also – he’d made the choice to serve his year of community service, as mandated by the Wizengamot, at Melangell’s Rest, one of the United Kingdom’s foremost wizarding animal sanctuaries. It’d seemed a better option than –
Tending to the aged and decrepit (who, with his luck, could have been nasty blood supremacists abandoned by their abused adult children and who’d get their rocks off hearing about his being a Death Eater); or
Herding sticky, grasping children at a wizarding orphanage (Draco was not good with children; he’d barely had the patience with First Years back in Hogwarts as a Prefect); or
Attending to the war-injured (he highly doubted anyone involved in the war, on both sides, wanted to see his face – he wasn’t suicidal).
But – the next morning when he’d returned to the owlery – he’d brought with him a pair of old Quidditch goggles, and a pair of gloves he’d procured from the Manor gardeners. A thick balaclava he’d ordered a house elf to knit-conjure overnight.
The next week, he’d borrowed a Muggle discman from his cousin Alexandre – the French Malfoy heir, who had arrived in England to take the reins of Malfoy Industries while Draco served his year of community service – and, looping the same Muggle CD from Alexandre repeatedly, he’d actually come to a certain meditative rhythm, going about his tasks in the owlery.
The CD in Alexandre’s discman was an album by a Muggle Irish pop band called The Corrs, singing in a devastatingly earnest manner about romantic love. It surprised Draco, who’d simply never thought about Muggles and romantic love in the same sentence.
And midway through that second week – Keeper Summerby had popped by, his tousled dark hair annoyingly stylish despite their surroundings – had taken one look at Draco and had sighed, telling him of a spell which could temporarily curb his sense of smell.
‘Why didn’t Lucy tell you about this…’ he’d mumbled, mostly to himself, and Draco had almost snapped at him – that no one wanted to make life easier for a Malfoy, these days.
Though his eyes could sting simply from the exposure, so he’d kept wearing his goggles.
But it had made things better.
By the end of the third week – Owl #34 had stopped trying to attack Draco. Instead, it’d even nudged its head towards him when he’d been tentatively checking its feathers. It’d keened when Draco had given it a scratch on its head.
Draco had then decided to refer to him by his gender and gave him a name (instead of Owl #34, or, in Draco’s mind, that fucking owl).
Because he’d been a bully, but apparently, he could also be sweet.
That was the first animal Draco named. He was called Aquila, the eagle, after the constellation – like how Draco was named after a constellation.
And now, today, one year later, Draco had asked to return to the first task he’d ever taken on at Melangell’s Rest. The first task which had made him think, having at some point repeated it for months: maybe the Wizengamot had known what they were doing, and it’d not purely been meant as humiliation, ordering the Malfoy heir to perform community service.
It felt like a homecoming, returning to it. This time, he didn’t even need the discman with him. The hooting was a kind of calm, a kind of song.
Even if he wouldn’t have minded listening to The Corrs’ So Young for a whole morning, either. The girls in the band had flawless harmonies.
Even if he couldn’t quite relate to the breathlessness with which they celebrated how they were so young now, and that they would do it all again, tomorrow.
He couldn’t begrudge, he supposed, if someone else got to do that.
And also – he needed to say goodbye to Aquila. That bloody bird was going to miss him.
***
But when he told Aquila, patting his velvet-soft head, like that irresistible landing between a cat’s ears, feeling his gentle, rapid cooing like purring against his own chest, Aquila looked up at him.
With those piercing orange eyes fixed on him, tilting his head.
And then he pecked him, sharp and hard, right in the centre of Draco’s chest.
Wincing, barely suppressing a yelp, knowing he was surely going to bruise where Aquila’s sharp beak had found purchase, Draco looked back up at the large bird – which had hopped up a perch, smacking a wing in Draco’s cheek in the process, staring down at him imperiously.
If he didn’t know better, he would’ve thought Aquila was pouting. Certainly, he was sulking.
Draco felt the sting of tears in his eyes. It was not the smell, which he’d gotten used to by now.
He was going to miss this stupid bird, too.
***
And then, Draco lingered. He still had other chores; he could complete other undertakings – over time he’d gotten better with being efficient with them. It helped that the sanctuary workers and volunteers (there was no one else court-mandated to turn up like he was) kept away from him – no one tried to be friendly, and thus no one could distract him with vapid, useless small talk.
Well – almost everyone didn’t talk to him unless they needed to. There was Summerby – Stirling, as he insisted on being called, an entirely poncey name, though by now Draco had been thinking of him as Stirling for some time, too – who’d turned out to be a Hufflepuff from Draco’s year.
Draco had had zero impression of the other boy, not even when he’d blinked and reminded him that he’d been his opposite number in Quidditch, as Hufflepuff’s Seeker after Cedric Diggory. In Draco’s defence – he would’ve only played for a year against the other boy, during his fifth year.
Draco had had to drop out of the Slytherin Quidditch team in sixth year, after all, because of Voldemort’s task to murder Dumbledore. Because dropping that extracurricular would’ve freed him up so completely that he would be able figure out how to kill one of the greatest wizards of the time.
Sometimes – when Draco thought back on the position he’d been forced into, which at some point he might have thought an honour to accept – if he didn’t laugh, he would have to cry.
He’d not had any business being at the heart of a war at sixteen.
They had none of them been able to play Quidditch that last year, after all. When Draco thought about it, having loved Quidditch dearly, once – having been repeatedly crushed every time he’d lost to Harry Potter – in a way, it had been a mercy, not to have had Quidditch that school year.
It would’ve tainted Quidditch.
Stirling had then tried reminding Draco that Draco’s best friend, Blaise Zabini, had had to punish him their seventh year, under directions of the Carrows. Draco had had the grace to wince at that – but at the same time, his memories from that year were always either mercifully hazy, or devastatingly sharp.
In any event, having been unable to stir any memories of himself in Draco, Stirling had explained: he was Keeper at the sanctuary because his family had run Melangell’s Rest for generations.
He was obviously of a similar social class to Draco. It was clear in the way he carried himself, the way he moved, his cut-glass accent, his carriage. But he had an ease and kindness about him, an unrelenting Hufflepuff decency practically radiating from his lean frame (Draco felt his lip curl at the thought) that, after a few weeks of occasional but consistent interaction with him, Draco realised why he didn’t remember him, from Hogwarts or any social events that children – scions – of a certain class would’ve been made to attend.
Draco would’ve never spoken to him in his past life. He would’ve taken one look at the other boy’s earnestness and stalked off in the opposite direction. If he hadn’t found some way to bully him, first.
And Draco realised one thing about himself, after Stirling had cornered him for the umpteenth time, offering a hot tea, offering biscuits, trying to talk about the weather, commenting on whichever animal Draco happened to be working on, at some point unilaterally unloading on Draco his burdens running the sanctuary – that he’d always been prickly. Defensive, probably offensive, around people who could’ve been kind, if he’d let them be.
Okay – he’d been downright mean to people who could’ve been kind to him.
Why?
He supposed it was a truism – well, perhaps a Slytherin core tenet – that being nice was nothing. Anyone could be nice.
So, Draco had never valued niceness. Certainly, Lucius had likely taught him to suspect, disdain niceness.
But wasn’t it another truism – that one liked it when one was treated nicely?
About three months into his term, Draco had realised, with startling clarity: that Stirling was nice. And Draco certainly hadn’t made it easy for him, to be nice.
Stirling was perhaps even a friend.
Because Draco had started to brainstorm with him ideas about issues with the sanctuary.
Because he’d started to look forward to the biscuits and the tea pressed on him.
Because he didn’t feel the need to armour himself against him. Which was a feeling Draco had never experienced, even around his closest friends – Blaise, Rafe Pike, Theo Nott, Pansy Parkinson.
All of them were typical Slytherins in how they treated each other: if it came down to it, they could – would – probably – certainly – die for each other, would follow each other into the dark, but there would be insults and feints and parries and loud complaints and pronouncements that the other person owed them, that they’d be collecting on their first born, every step of the way. If there weren’t a spikiness, a jostling for position that was near-constant, Draco would’ve probably thought there was something wrong with his friends.
Draco had even started popping into Stirling’s office, every morning before he started on a task, and when he’d not heard from the other boy for too long.
Somewhere along the way, the boys developed a rhythm – and they’d been talking, every day now, for months.
Stirling had even invited him over to his flat, in Muggle London. It’d certainly been something different, standing in an apartment of all glass and metal, overlooking the Thames.
Standing in the apartment of a boy who’d fought on the side of the Order, at the Battle of Hogwarts.
But that glass box was surprisingly beautiful, and Draco had found himself reluctantly marvelling at the nifty Muggle gadgets Stirling had shown him about the house.
Draco had even thought to himself – that once he was back in London, working for Malfoy Industries – perhaps he could get an apartment like this, himself.
Get a coffee maker, and a sandwich maker, just like the ones Stirling had.
Toasties – which Stirling explained were made with his Muggle sandwich maker – were surprisingly delicious. Stirling had even made him try one with luncheon meat in it, which looked like a horrid, pink, processed Muggle mystery meat, but which was shockingly tasty, a delicious sodium bomb, buffeted by butter and toasted bread.
But in the present, just as Draco was about to reach the thestrals’ pen – he felt a swoosh of wind, heard the flapping of wings, and then there was a heavy thump against his shoulder.
He winced as Aquila’s claws dug into his right shoulder. And had to shift his head, so that he was not banging up against Aquila’s left wing and body.
Aquila was not light.
The owl did not look down at him. Just continued to perch on his shoulder, despite the awkwardness, the discomfort for Draco, and perhaps even for him, because Draco’s slender shoulders – he’d always been self-conscious that his frame took more after Narcissa’s than Lucius or Grandfather Abraxas’ – could hardly be sufficient, and Aquila kept having to make little hops when he couldn’t quite find purchase on it.
“Are you seriously doing this?” Draco muttered, maybe at Aquila, maybe at himself.
When he reached the thestrals – his favourite thestral immediately loping towards the edge of the pen, pawing at the ground, nodding his head in Draco’s direction in greeting (Draco had named him Corvus, because he was sleek and black as a raven) – with Aquila still balanced precariously on his shoulder, Draco realised that the question was definitely for himself.
Was he seriously going to leave the sanctuary behind, now that he’d completed his term?
***
It was ridiculous, and perhaps – to a Draco long dead by now, dragged through by the undertow of the war – the true, fitting punishment from the Wizengamot, that one year after his sentencing, he’d been bullied, pummelled into a certain tenderness by a stupid bird and a bloody Hufflepuff.
Was this what they’d meant by reforming?
Draco almost bared his teeth at the thought.
But that evening, when he was finally done – he dropped by Stirling’s office, and said he would see him, the next day, which was a Saturday.
That Stirling would continue to see him, at least on the weekends – whatever time Draco could spare, considering Malfoy Industries was likely going to eat him alive with its demands.
Stirling said, smiling his perfect woodland prince smile, hazel eyes alight, “Of course, Draco. You’re the best worker on the sanctuary. And one of my best friends.”
He felt a traitorous sense of pride, at that.
He hoped, at least, that fucking psychopath Aunt Bella was spinning in her grave, knowing that her favourite nephew now volunteered to rehabilitate wounded animals.
He ought really to write to Lucius about it – if only so it would keep his father up at night in Azkaban. It thrilled Draco that Lucius could say nothing about what he wanted to do, now.
Even if what he wanted, apparently, was spend time in an animal sanctuary. With his new best friend, an actual do-gooder Hufflepuff.
And as he left Melangell’s Rest, Draco lifted his face up to the still-bright summer sky, stretching his hands out, Aquila circling overhead – as if to embrace the open.
He’d never seen the sky quite so blue.
***
But the next day – the Saturday – Draco returned to Melangell’s Rest, having told none of his mother or his cousin Alexandre or his lieutenant Theo Nott of his intention to continue now as a volunteer, only to spy through the small window next to the door to Stirling’s office, the flash of bright red hair, the sound of pretty laughter.
He knew that voice.
She’d become unfortunately, irritatingly familiar in his seventh year – the year he’d been Head Boy, until Voldemort had finally decided his purpose was better served in the Manor (had he been? He’d been as pathetic at torture in front of Voldemort as he’d been under the Carrows’ supervision) – always running into trouble when he’d told her, hissed at her, as carefully as he could, lips against her soft hair, to please for the fucking love of Merlin, stop.
He’d always cried, when it’d come to torturing her.
She’d screamed, she’d whimpered, she’d pleaded in delirium from the pain, but she never cried. Somehow – he supposed he never broke her.
He’d never reached the floor of her resilience. Her wide brown eyes always defiant, staring straight back up at him, at the start of every session.
After the first few times, he’d prayed silently, every time subsequent, for her sanity.
And slightly over a year ago, during his trial – she’d testified on his lawyers’ request but entirely not on Draco’s preference, on his behalf. Said that he’d been unwilling, painted a picture of his resistance, his tears, his weakness. Said that he’d been coerced, surely.
Begged leniency for him. Despite him fixing the Vanishing Cabinet having caused the permanent maiming of her oldest brother and him being on the side that had killed one of the Weasley twins.
He’d never felt his throat tighter, that afternoon in court as she’d given her testimony. The tears running unchecked, his snot accumulating so quickly he’d not been able to properly breathe. It’d been worse even than hearing the sympathetic testimonies of Harry Potter, of Hermione Granger.
The fucking mercy. The terrible, unbearable grace.
It’d felt so much like she’d pitied him. The way she spoke, as if she were pushing through words with cost – it was as if she had known too well the inside of betrayal by someone you’d loved, the underside of compulsion.
Draco Malfoy had never wanted ever again to see Ginny Weasley, and yet here she was, at the sanctuary.
In his space.
***
So, without popping in to greet Stirling in his office that morning, his heart in his throat, not wanting to examine how he felt that Ginny Weasley was anywhere in his vicinity and knowing only that he had to avoid her, Draco retreated. He marked his name on the duty board hanging outside the office so that the other workers would know which animals he would be attending to.
Then he went to his chosen task, in the quietest corner of the sanctuary where they kept the cluster of pens holding the augureys.
The first time he’d seen one, his first thought had been: well, no surprise that people associated this creature with death.
The augurey was not a pretty bird. It also didn’t have the character to look menacing in its ugliness. There was no description for its physical appearance more efficient than small, underfed vulture.
There could perhaps have been some beauty in the greenish-black of its plumage, almost opalescent in certain light. But it was difficult to offset that skinny neck that evoked fuzzy pipe cleaners or the protruding eyes giving the impression that someone had smooshed two blue marbles into the bird’s face.
Truly not a dignified looking thing.
And the first time he’d heard one of them cry, he’d understood, in his bones, why wizarding folk had thought the birds’ call a death omen. It was a mournful, unfortunate sound – piercing, going straight to the heart.
So when Draco first started cleaning the augureys’ pens – they were each of them to a pen, given they seemed frightened of their own shadows, and had a bad habit of plucking out each other’s feathers in anxiety when left together (they were only clearheaded enough to stop when it was mating season) – he’d quickly learned to listen to The Corrs, instead, too.
He would turn So Young up especially loud when a given augurey popped off.
The augureys cried not only in anticipation of dreaded rain, but also when a stranger entered their pens.
He only realised, about three months ago in the first baby steps of summer, one day forgetting to bring extra Muggle batteries for Alexandre’s discman and walking into a pen without music, that that particular augurey he was looking after did not cry.
Instead, she gingerly stepped out of her tear-shaped nest of brambles and thorny shrubs – the augureys tended to keep to a corner of their expansive pens, and really it was relatively easy to maintain their cleanliness – and proceeded to follow him around while he cleared her droppings, filled up her food trough, changed out her water.
As if she were inspecting his work. Perhaps as if she were accustomed to his presence, now.
Thus was Augurey #8 named Aisling, by Draco.
She’d been the first animal he’d named outside the constellations. Aisling seemed to suit her – the Irish name meant a dream, a vision, after all, which suited her eyes, a milkier blue and dreamy. And she’d apparently been rescued off a coast in Northern Ireland.
According to her ledger – she’d been a broken thing, somehow having been thrown against rocks, left to die in the unrelenting, salt-bitten cold of the nearby Irish Sea.
She would remain the only augurey comfortable enough to follow him around, even though she always kept a respectful distance. But soon, the other augureys stopped crying just because he was around, too.
It was a kind of acceptance, maybe – Draco was embarrassed at how fanciful the thought was, so it would always remain a thought – even a kind of love. When he’d noticed their collective silence by August 1999, he’d been a little proud.
***
But just as Draco and Aisling were going about their business, the gate to Aisling’s pen opened with a creak.
Aisling almost immediately started darting away frantically on her stick legs, towards her nest. Jumping into it, she buried herself into its heart, and then –
She cried.
That sound – loud, keening, heartbreaking – he’d not had to hear even the dimmed version of it through his music, in over a month.
Draco’s eyes fluttered close, for a moment, and he felt something jump in his jaw.
Who the fuck had broken his delicate understanding with Aisling? How the fuck long was she going to take to trust him again?
Then he turned back to the gate, fingernails digging into his palms. He was angry, but he was also surprised at the force of his anger, arriving like a sudden tide, hitting the inside wall of his chest.
He’d nearly forgotten how it was to be this angry. For more than a year – maybe even for two, even three, years, he’d been scared, helpless, hopeless, desperate, despairing, depressed. He’d not felt heat, something vicious and alive.
Ginny Weasley was at the gate, her mouth hanging slightly open, her brown eyes large in her elfin face.
She looked so bloody stupid. Gormless bint.
Draco spoke first.
“Why the fuck did you just come in like that, Weasley?”
***
“Malfoy – good Merlin, must you be so mean? Still? I was told to catch up with you at the augureys – Stirling told me to – and I’d entered slowly when I saw you in here, like I’m supposed to –”
Draco pressed his eyes closed again, for a moment. He felt something tight around his temples. He felt Aisling’s pathetic gaze on him on the back of his neck.
Rationally, he knew – however Weasley could’ve approached getting into the pen, Aisling would have been triggered. It was purely because she was new to Aisling.
In fact, because Weasley had entered slowly, was still now clinging to the gate – Aisling had only made one cry. She could’ve persisted. It’d happened to Draco, when he first started working with the augureys.
But he was still pissed.
And he’d heard the words – must you be so mean? Still?
The still grated on him. Like she was saying – the last time she’d been anywhere near him, she’d stuck her neck out for him, when he hadn’t asked her to, when he hadn’t deserved it.
And she was implying that he wasn’t grateful for it. Like he should be on his knees in front of her, thanking her for her absolution.
It angered Draco because he knew some part of him did want to.
It was probably the same part that had sent her a disjointed, tear-stained letter after her testimony before he could stop himself, thanking her for what she’d said.
Or at least, he hoped he’d managed to thank her. He’d blocked out what he’d sent to her, except that it was likely a disaster.
That same part of him had heard she’d decided not to complete her seventh year at Hogwarts and was instead auditioning for professional Quidditch teams – and so, he’d put in a good word (verbally, Draco didn’t want his lawyers upset that it could be construed as witness tampering) with the Montrose Magpies’ manager, Cormack McLeod. Who Draco knew personally, because he’d been the one to convince Lucius to invest in the Magpies through Malfoy Industries when he’d been a child.
Cormack had fixed him with an unreadable expression when he’d broached the topic of Ginny Weasley. Draco had feared he’d done the wrong thing – Cormack was a fiercely principled Scotsman, and he could’ve truly have fucked things up for Weasley.
But Cormack had simply given him a sharp nod, eyes never leaving Draco’s face.
And Weasley’s joining the team as a reserve Chaser had been announced within the week.
But Weasley had never replied that letter he’d written. And she’d never known – he was pretty sure – about him talking to Cormack.
Draco hadn’t attended a Magpies game since her professional debut. He still loved Quidditch – perhaps. It was, like many things from his youth, folded into a smaller square of a thing, tucked into deep recesses of his heart.
And Draco didn’t want anyone to think he had anything to do with Ginny Weasley’s appointment with the Magpies.
But now Ginny Weasley was standing in front of him, having spooked Aisling, still expecting him to perform gratefulness.
“You’re such a bloody bull in a china shop,” Draco bit out. “All of you Weasleys always have been. Now you’ve gone and upset Aisling –”
Weasley’s expression quickly collapsed at this, into one of worry and concern, her eyes wide and pretty in a way that Draco could’ve only described as being doe eyes.
For Salazar’s sake.
Draco rolled his eyes expressively, turned back towards Aisling, who still had her eyes fixed on him.
Draco approached slowly, crouching down so that he was closer to the ground, nearer to Aisling’s eye level.
He kept his eyes on her, blinking slowly at intervals – Stirling had mentioned that skittish cats preferred to be approached this way, otherwise reading maintained eye contact as being on the prey end of a predator-prey situation, and Draco had decided to apply it to other animals on the vague theory that it could help – before finally coming to a stop roughly two feet from her nest. Then he settled himself to the ground, gently. Got into a cross-legged seat.
Mimicked the low cooing noises Aisling was making now, opening his palms up towards her.
When she tentatively stuck her head out of the nest, towards him, Draco slowly pulled out a bag of feed which he’d grabbed before coming to her pen, containing a handful of dead crickets. He lifted one out, placed it on his right palm.
Extended it carefully towards her.
Aisling made a little chirp, then reached for the cricket with her sharp beak – then pulled the cricket headfirst into her mouth in a swift motion.
“Good girl, Aisling,” Draco murmured, as she ate. “Good girl.”
Behind him, a few feet away – he heard Ginny Weasley dropping softly to the ground.
He could deal with her later.
***
He sat with Aisling for at least ten minutes, feeding her another cricket from his hand, finally only making to stand up when a few moments passed and she didn’t continue making distressed noises.
But Draco somehow knew that it would be some time before she followed him around while he cleaned her pen, again.
A soft sigh passed his lips as he turned around, making to go towards the gate. He’d been mostly done with Aisling’s pen before Weasley’s interruption, and he didn’t think what had been outstanding was so critical that he risk Aisling’s fragile peace.
Weasley was still kneeling on the ground, her small face lifted at Draco, as if waiting for instructions.
Opening her mouth, she started, “Is she – do you think she’s –”
Stupid, useless question.
“We can go now, Weasley,” he interrupted. The words came out in something like an impatient hiss. “Quietly, for Salazar’s sake.”
***
As soon as they were both out of the pen – Draco meant to tell her to return to Stirling, he wasn’t here to handhold her, that no one has held his hand when he’d arrived, what the fuck was she even here for –
“That was incredible, how you were, with that augurey,” Weasley breathed, looking up at him. Her long fringe, partially escaping her messy high ponytail, curled and framed her face. It was girlish, perhaps even endearing.
She was looking at him like she’d not even remembered they were supposed to hate each other.
Well – Draco hadn’t hated her in years, if he thought about it. He wasn’t even sure whether he’d ever actually hated her.
He was briefly stymied at the thought.
Had he always simply assumed that he hated her?
“She – you said her name was Aisling, right – was calm, by the time you were done with her,” Weasley was still saying. “It was so lovely to witness. She obviously trusted you. I’d never have believed it if someone had told me you could do something like that – no wonder Stirling said to follow you around for my first few times at the sanctuary –”
“What are you doing here, Weasley?” he interrupted. “Aren’t you busy being a Quidditch star? Don’t you have a game tomorrow?”
Draco still listened to the Magpies’ games on the wireless, while working on assignments issued by Alexandre, in preparation for him working full-time at Malfoy Industries.
The Magpies were up against the Ballycastle Bats the next day. It would be a good clash – the Bats were a Northern Irish team which flew like they’d never forgiven the English as colonisers.
Weasley blinked at him, then a look of irritation crossed her face. Her cupid’s bow lips pressing into a line.
“Look, Malfoy – I’m sorry I upset Aisling, but Stirling told me that it’s normal for augureys to spook when someone new shows up, and that hardly any of the sanctuary workers have gotten them all to stop crying. No need to get your knickers in a twist – Aisling looked unharmed –”
“You do not understand, Weasley,” said Draco emphatically, feeling that tide of anger rise within him again, “The augureys all stopped crying around me. Aisling even follows me around, wants to be near me –”
“Oh,” said Weasley, abruptly. Her eyes were wide again, and for a moment her mouth hung open slightly from her pronouncement.
Draco felt the heat rise to his cheeks, suddenly – realising what he’d just told Weasley. How he held as important that some augurey liked him enough to want to be near to him.
Clearly showing how unfamiliar he was with anything wanting to be near to him.
Fuck he could be embarrassing.
But then that stubborn look again, on her face – one that he recognised from back from Hogwarts. From that year with the damned Carrows, especially.
“But – I want to help, Malfoy, and Stirling said you were the person I should learn from –”
“You can always help by donating money, Weasley,” he sneered. “I’m sure you’re comfortably paid, now? Your family finally above the poverty line after your heroics during the war? Or surely Potter is maintaining you, as his little girlfriend? So – you could more efficiently help by donating, Weasley. Or you can bring up the sanctuary more often, make use of your celebrity –”
“For someone so clearly disdainful of me you sure seem to keep tabs on me, Malfoy,” said Weasley coolly. “And maybe you’re not the kind of person the Prophet wants to write about to promote readership, but you’ve got plenty of money yourself.”
And then she continued, before Draco could open his mouth again, “And really, I’m just doing what you’re doing, Malfoy. I want to volunteer – I know you’re volunteering, now. I waited for your term to be up, before coming here, just so you know. It wasn’t like I wanted to run into you.”
He felt the sting of her words even before they fully landed; she wasn’t even holding his gaze as she said them.
“It was all a bit embarrassing, where we left off – whatever it was that we left off. I didn’t think you would want to see me, Malfoy, and I didn’t need to see you.”
***
She always made him feel so damned uncomfortable, never knowing what the fuck he was doing, especially in their interactions since his seventh year, her sixth.
He still couldn’t remember – or perhaps didn’t want to remember – what he’d written to her, in that letter.
***
A/N 2:
Draco’s post-war rehabilitation details are an invention.
Melangell’s Rest and all details relating to it is an invention.
Artaxerxes as Draco’s owl is an invention that I’ve used across my other fics. He does have a personality of his own.
Alexandre and details of the British vs. French Malfoys and Malfoy Industries are inventions which I’ve used across my other fics.
The Corrs are a real-life band consisting of siblings and I grew up with their music in the 90s/2000s. So Young is a classic!
Stirling Summerby is seeded from canon; there was a Hufflepuff Seeker by the surname, but all other details are inventions.
Rafe Pike is seeded from canon; there was a Slytherin from Draco’s year called Pike, but all other details are inventions. I’ve used Rafe as a character throughout my fics, most notably That Delicate Look.
Some of the characterisation of augureys (such as the crying when they see a stranger) is invention.
Cormack McLeod was probably canonically the Magpies’ manager during this time.
Ginny being with the Magpies (and skipping Hogwarts) is an invention.