THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Twenty-One: ACHELOIS

◤ ❝Somewhere along the way it caught up to us. We were able to rewrite the past with a new definition of its own. Draco Malfoy was everything light, costly in a world where darkness threatened him around every turn...but I was everything dark, sacrificed to the end when the light became scalding to the touch. The core of a person does not live around them. It is everything within them. That is where we got stuck.❞ ― Andromeda Erebus ◢

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE:     ACHELOIS

January 5, 1997

Horace Slughorn, 10 September 1996

                  It seems that there is a wide selection of students at Hogwarts who show great potential in the coming times of the Second War. So many of them are beginning to display the charisma and intrigue that I have seen so infrequently since parting with my profession at Hogwarts. And Harry Potter! What an honor it is to be in the presence of such a legend! Already I can see that the boy displays talents in more than just the Potions classroom. M̶y̶ ̶o̶n̶l̶y̶ ̶f̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶y̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶g̶r̶o̶w̶ ̶u̶p̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶b̶e̶ ̶s̶i̶m̶i̶l̶a̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶t̶w̶i̶n̶.̶ ̶W̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶M̶i̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶P̶o̶t̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶i̶f̶ ̶h̶e̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶i̶n̶f̶l̶u̶e̶n̶c̶e̶d̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶m̶a̶g̶i̶c̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶b̶e̶c̶a̶m̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶M̶i̶s̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶R̶i̶d̶d̶l̶e̶?̶ ̶I̶ ̶f̶e̶a̶r̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶w̶o̶r̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶b̶o̶y̶,̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶h̶i̶s̶ ̶p̶o̶t̶e̶n̶t̶i̶a̶l̶ ̶m̶a̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶r̶a̶y̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶ ̶d̶o̶w̶n̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶a̶t̶h̶ ̶t̶i̶m̶e̶l̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶h̶i̶m̶. I am excited to watch as Harry grows to be an outstanding, young wizard inside of my classroom. He is already showing himself to be perhaps one of the most talented of his peers.

Andromeda scoffed, her eyes wanting to roll further back into her head as she read the passage about Potter. What amused her even more was the constant scribbles in the leather, black book. Slughorn's thoughts were often erratic at times, but from the few (boring) excerpts that she read, she could tell that there was never a day in his life when Slughorn was not thinking about Tom Riddle and the Dark Lord. To her dismay, the book had not provided any insight into what she was looking for thus far. She had spent the last week reading through the most recent inserts of the book, realizing with great dismay that the later pages only appeared once finishing the last. 

Since the opened book was laid in her hands by the Dark Lord himself, she had kept an iron clutch on it and dared not to let anyone else see. Much had changed since that day. Theodore and Celicia came home to see her curled up in the darkest cove of the library, clutching herself and shaking desperately to rid herself off the trauma rattling in her bones. The book of Slughorn's was found in her hand, the cover of it bloodied by the deep cut that the Dark Lord inflicted upon her left hand. 

From that moment on, Mia had inverted into herself. She spoke little to either of them for the rest of the holiday, locking herself in her bedroom with Atlas and returning back to the old habits of not sleeping or eating unless Picket was forcefully making her do so. Theodore hovered, more than he usually did, because he was the only one who could see just how deeply the conversation with the Dark Lord had scarred her. She could not tell him that the Dark Lord had presented his head to her as a threat specific to her heart, and that it had traumatized her so greatly she could barely look him in the eye without drowning in guilt.