Drarry One Shots

Say My Name Again

A/N My take on a particular head canon combined with another common trope. A year eight story... Also with Peanut. And I feel guilty because I keep turning Justin into an unpleasant character (warning of homophobia/homophobic slur used).

Also, apologies but it gets a bit crude/smutty/hopefully suitably heated (not explicit)

***

When I was given the Dark Mark, life changed beyond all recognition. As my sixth year at Hogwarts progressed, I began to think that I had changed too; no longer confident and arrogant but frightened and panicked by the hopeless prospect of a murder I was neither capable of performing nor wanted to commit. My body no longer mine, my skin changed by others, first by the Dark Mark that adorned my forearm and then by the scars that Potter gifted me.

During our seventh year, life changed again when the Golden Trio tracked across Britain, searching for their secrets, dogged like hunted foxes, and when Severus Snape moulded the rest of the pupils of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry into reserved and cowed children, forgotten by laughter and pranks and wit. I became quiet and withdrawn, broken by circumstance and no longer the haughty, confident Slytherin Prince born to rule. I was someone who mistrusted my place in the world and wanted to believe in Harry Potter but was unable to express such hopes apart from through that brief moment of rebellion when the lies tipped from my tongue and my eyes hid the truth. For the first time in my life I hoped rather than believed. With hope comes doubt but I put my faith in someone other than my father and I hoped.

When the Dark Lord's voice, omniscient and terrifying, echoed through the Great Hall during the Battle of Hogwarts, I finally recognised that Potter had changed too. No longer the awkward and easily riled, broken boy of our early years, or the angry and ferocious aftermath of Dumbledore's death, or the ball of destructive desperation who had stormed out of our home a month earlier. Instead he stood stoically against such a formidable force like a wild lion preparing to tear to the ground adversity and defeat.

As I sat through my trial, Potter looked different again. He looked dismissive and condescending of those he faced on their Wizengamot-cushioned arses as he defended my actions and spoke eloquently of my supposed heroism and how Voldemort's fate was conquered so ultimately by the love of two mothers facing the greatest severity of duress.

I wondered if I knew him anymore.

And I wondered, as I persevered through the summer after the war under House Arrest, how much we had all been moulded and formed and changed by the events leading up to the war and then the final Battle of Hogwarts itself.

It was then that I toyed with the idea of transformation in my own self-image. I didn't really know how to go about it. I wanted to show I was a different person but I was still Draco Malfoy; I still held a pride in my name, in my heritage, in who I was, in how I looked. Ultimately, I was unable to step too far from the tree in that aspect. I liked the formality of my family name. In the end, I took to wearing black jeans and boots with white shirts and waistcoats and a long black coat rather than the suits of sixth and seventh year. The change was there for those who looked.

When I was accompanied by an Auror to Diagon Alley to collect my new supplies for our 'year eight', I saw how quiet everyone was as they went about their business and how no one made eye contact or greeted one another. Nothing was certain any more, no one knew who to trust or what was solid fact or who to blame. They turned away, berated by life.

As we huddled in small quiet groups on Platform 9¾ of King's Cross Station and said goodbye to fearful loved ones, I watched sombre expressions and listened to hushed voices that whispered farewells, apprehensive of what they faced this forthcoming year for what if it was worse than what we'd all been through. How would we cope?