Chapter Text
Draco was eight when he first began to understand what it meant to be an omega.
He knew what an omega was, of course, at least in the general sense, and knew that he was one, if only because no one ever stopped telling him, but he’d never seen how it mattered until it mattered.
It was Yule, and Draco had asked his parents for a racing broom. He’d thought of little else but Quidditch since the family had seen last season’s championship game in Lyon—the first time Draco had ever been out of the Manor, and the most formative experience of his young life so far. He’d dreamed of wings all autumn, of soaring through fluffy white clouds and skimming the surface of the river behind the Manor with the tips of his fingers as he flew down its length.
But instead of a broom, he received a doll.
It was a fine doll, to be sure, with porcelain skin and long, soft hair. Her blue eyes blinked and her painted mouth smiled with subtle enchantments that made her look almost alive.
“But,” Draco said, frowning, “I wanted a broom.”
“Draco,” his father sighed, “an omega should not be flying.”
“But,” Draco said again, and looked askance across the room.
Cordelia, his younger sister, was on the other side of the Yule log with a brand new Cleansweep even though she’d asked for a crup. Unlike Draco, Cordelia was an alpha. And because she had something that Draco wanted, she stuck her tongue out at him and hugged the broom to her chest—as if he needed any reassurance that his sister would never share her things with him. As ever, Draco choked on his anger. Any time he showed it or said it out loud, after all, he was told sternly to be quiet.
Father had already stopped listening to him, in any case. He’d crouched down at his daughter’s side, telling her that he’s sure she’ll be a fine flier and that we’ll take you out after breakfast, eh? He smiled and tousled her hair with the sort of casual warmth and fatherly affection that Draco never had expressed to him.
Desperate, he looked over at his mother, perched on a wingback chair by the fireplace. She was an omega, like him, and every now and then she would gently push back against Father’s decisions and words.
But not this time. This time, all she had to offer Draco was a sad smile. Somehow, it felt like a betrayal.
It was the first time that ‘omega’—the concept of it, the process of being it—took a meaningful shape in Draco’s mind, but of course, that wasn’t the first time ‘omega’ had been inflicted on him. It had been drilled into him, every part of his life and psyche, since the moment he was born. ‘Omega’ was the way he was told not to make a fuss even when his sister threw a tantrum. ‘Omega’ was the comments from Aunt Fiona and Granny Dru telling him that he’d make a fine wife one day, long before Draco knew what a wife was. ‘Omega’ was the reason that Cordelia had been born less than a year after Draco, because an omega could never be the heir of House Malfoy.
‘Omega’ was simmering anger and clenched teeth. ‘Omega’ was compliance and subservience.
Cordelia also got a crup that year. Draco didn’t get a second present.
Draco was nine the first time he cast a spell.
Though he’d always been able to sense magic—around him, inside him, even and especially in the earth beneath his feet—he’d never put together that being a wizard meant being able to manipulate it until the first time he tried.
It had been a particularly harsh winter in Wiltshire, and the Malfoy Manor had spent nearly two solid months under a foot of snow. By the time spring came around, the huge garden out behind it needed extensive work to bring it back to life.
Draco didn’t mind at all. Most of the things Draco liked—Quidditch, chess, climbing trees—were things he wasn’t permitted to do. Likewise, most of the things Draco was allowed to do—embroidery, singing, painting, piano—were things he found desperately boring. Gardening was the perfect compromise: something he was not only allowed to do, but encouraged to do, and something he loved doing. He didn’t even mind the dirt and the sweat and the bugs; they were uncomfortable, but they were signs of effort, proof of how he was helping the garden grow.
His mother joined him more often than not. It was, after all, her garden. And on that first spring day mild enough to work, when they went out with the house-elves to assess the damage of the long, hard winter, she said, “Oh, no. The fairywing.”
Fairywing was not actually fairy wings, of course, though Draco could see how they got their name: they were delicate flowers, with long and slightly transparent petals of pale blue. They, along with several others, were cordoned off in a special area of the garden, full of plants used not for decoration, but for potion work. Draco didn’t know which potions his mother made with them, but knew that she put more effort into them than all the other plants in the garden combined.
And when he followed his mother’s gaze toward them, he could see why she was upset. Fairywing was a delicate species, very susceptible to frost, and there wasn’t much left of it after a winter so brutal. Its woody stem was thin and gnarled, its petals blackened and small.
“It will make good compost,” Draco said. That was what his mother always told him when he was upset about a plant’s death. He expected it’d make her feel better, too, but when he looked back, her face was contorted with worry. “Mother?”
“Fairywing is… it’s more important than the others, dear,” she answered, wringing her dragon hide work gloves between her bare hands and staring down at the dead plant with growing dread. “I use it for… well, I suppose you don’t need to worry about that. Not for many years, anyhow.”
She was trying very hard to sound mild, but Draco could see the fear behind her eyes. Draco didn’t like it when he was told not to worry about things—and he was told it a lot. No one ever wanted him to worry about anything.
The magic in the garden was still sleeping. Draco felt it, as he always did, like a kneazle’s rumbling purr. It was vast and deep and cool like still water. And it was not unkind, nor intractable.
“If we asked the garden nicely,” Draco said, “I bet it would regrow for us.”
But when he looked back at his mother, she was several feet away, talking in low, urgent tones to Dobby. Draco frowned at her, then turned his attention back to the fairywing. He was almost sure that he could bring the fairywing back. He just needed to give the garden something for its trouble.
That evening, after dinner but before bed, Draco stole into his parents’ bedroom and took a few pieces from his mother’s jewelry box—a set of earrings made from delicate sapphire, an emerald pendant, and a gold-banded ring set with glimmering garnets. His mother had so much jewelry already, and he was sure she wouldn’t miss a few pieces. He carried them reverently in both hands out of the house and into the garden, wash in the golden light of sundown.
He knelt at the dead fairywing and, very carefully, dug a hole at its base.
“My mother needs this plant for her potions,” he whispered, and tucked the gems one by one into the soft, loamy earth, “so please bring it back. Thank you.”
And sure enough, the very next morning, the fairywing was in full bloom, three feet tall and glittering with golden pollen. His mother was stunned, but Draco wasn’t. He was feeling quite pleased with himself.
“I knew it would work,” he said.
His mother looked over at him nervously. “What worked?”
“I asked the garden to grow and it did,” he answered. He was flush with pride. He could feel the magic in the garden humming, vibrating—it was so happy with Draco’s gifts, and Draco was happy he made it happy. “I gave it a present, and it did as I asked.”
He smiled brightly at his mother, but she wasn’t smiling back. Her expression of terror was enough to have Draco’s joy flagging.
“Mother?”
“Who taught you how to do that?” she asked faintly. Her hand was clasped over her chest. “Where did you learn Craft?”
“Craft?” Draco parroted back, perplexed. “What’s—?”
“The old magics,” she hissed, and looked nervously over her shoulder. Dobby and Dotty were together on the other side of the garden, carefully spelling away the weeds with slow, deliberate movements. When she seemed confident that they weren’t listening, she seized Draco by one shoulder and steered him several feet further away.
“Draco,” she said, and knelt down in front of him in that way adults did when they had something very urgent to say, “listen to me: that is not the proper way for magic to be done.”
Draco was bewildered. “It… it’s not?” He hadn’t even realized he’d done magic. It had neither felt like nor looked like a spell as Draco understood it—after all, he’d seen his father use his wand plenty of times, flashy and grandiose, and he’d seen the house-elves, too, with their more subtle but no less impressive spellwork. Draco didn’t realize his request qualified as magic. From his perspective, all he’d done was ask the garden for a trade.
“It’s not,” she answered, emphatic. “Draco, the world does not look kindly on the old magics. They’re not… magic should come from inside you. Right? With a wand. You shouldn’t bargain for it.”
“Why not?” Draco asked.
“It’s not safe.”
“Not safe?” The idea struck him as absurd. The magic in the garden was the same magic that was everywhere, wasn’t it? And it had never done anything to hurt him. “I don’t understand. How is it not safe?”
“If your father finds out you were using Craft—”
His mother shut her eyes, took a steadying breath. Draco couldn’t recall a time when she looked more frightened.
“Just… just promise me, Draco. Promise me that you won’t bargain for magic like that anymore.”
“I’m sorry,” Draco answered at once, and he really is. So many times his father had curtly demanded apologies from Draco for things he didn’t think warranted one, but his mother never had. The mere existence of his mother’s distress made something in Draco quake with dread. “I’m sorry, Mother, I didn’t mean to upset you.”
She fell to one knee, pulled Draco into her arms. She held him like that for a long time, almost too tight to bear, but Draco bore it.
“They say that the Craft was created by omegas,” she whispered into Draco’s hair, “that it answers us before all others. That’s why they fear it. That’s why it’s dangerous. It’s something that gives us power, and there will never be anything more threatening to an alpha than an omega with power.”
Draco didn’t understand. He would in time.
Draco was ten when he was almost kidnapped.
In general, Draco wasn’t allowed out of the Manor much. In fact, since that trip to Lyon for the Quidditch championship game, he hadn’t left at all. It was in sharp, painful contrast to Cordelia, who was taken out all the time, usually hand-in-hand with Father, who was eager to show her off at the numerous social events to which he was invited.
Draco didn’t get shown off. Whenever Draco asked to go to one of his father’s fancy parties or to accompany him on business out at the Ministry, he’d be told to go to his room, or that it wasn’t a suitable outing for an omega, and Draco would fume and fist his hands in his skirt and swallow his anger.
For the most part, his life was confined to the gilded cage that was the Malfoy Manor, piano lessons and needlepoint with Mother and weekly tutoring in the library with Professor Snape and Cordelia, a dull monotony broken up only by afternoons in the garden.
But sometimes, when he was very lucky or very persistent, he’d be taken along somewhere.
“Master Draco and Mistress Cordelia must stay close,” Dobby said as soon as they appeared in the middle of Diagon Alley with a bang, but Draco could barely hear him. Draco could barely hear anything, because it was so loud, and so big, and so, so colorful.
Draco had never seen this many people in one place before. They packed the bright, narrow streets, shoving in and out of shop doors and past each other, shouting and laughing and haggling.
And the smells! Draco took a deep breath in. Fresh bread from the bakery down the way, gardenias from the florist to their left, potions reagents from Slug & Jigger’s, a passing witch’s ambergris perfume, mince pie from the open doors of the Leaky Cauldron—Draco felt overwhelmed in the best possible way.
“Ugh, it’s so hot,” Cordelia whined, which drew Draco’s attention. He knew she’d been here before several times, usually with Father. Annoyance flared, and Draco bit back a comment reminding her that she didn’t have to be here. Dobby hadn’t wanted to take either one of them, and Draco had to beg to come along. Cordelia was only here because she couldn’t abide Draco doing something she didn’t get to do also.
“Dobby only has a few orders to pick up, and then it’s straight home,” he said. “First, some reagents. This way, children, this way.”
Draco felt like he couldn’t keep his eyes on anything for longer than a few seconds. He wanted to go into every shop, talk to everyone who passed, ask Dobby a thousand questions—it was all he could do to contain his excitement. An omega should always be decorous, Draco, his father said whenever Draco felt too much of anything.
It was because he’d been looking at everything that he noticed the man in the purple suit.
He was very tall and very thin, and Draco could tell, even from ten feet across a busy street, two things:
First, the man in the purple suit was an alpha. The scent of him saturated the air, dominating all others, smoky and acrid and intense like Father’s scotch.
Second, the man was staring at Draco.
A prickle rose up Draco’s back, a reaction that felt like the one Draco got before a storm, a sort of low-grade dread and a rising awareness of danger to come. There was something about the man’s eyes that made Draco nervous, even though he didn’t quite understand why.
“Come, come, Master Draco.”
Dobby’s familiar voice pulled Draco’s attention away. He turned and hurried into the apothecary. One wall was dominated by a vertical nursery, hundreds of little plants in little pots, all of them labeled and under their own little hovering orbs of magical sunlight. Draco was distracted by that for a while, making a mental list of plants to ask Mother to add to the garden.
But when they all left the apothecary, the man in the purple suit was still there.
And he followed them into Madam Primpernelle’s to pick up Mother’s skin cream. And then into Twilfitt at Tatting’s for the dress robe Father had ordered. And then into Gringott’s to make a deposit. He kept getting closer and closer and closer.
More than once, when he got near enough to be in arm’s reach, Draco looked over at Dobby, at Cordelia, but if either of them saw the man in the purple suit, they didn’t pay him any mind. Draco felt off-balance and almost frantic. He didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t supposed to speak against an alpha—Father had said as much so many times—but surely the man in the purple suit shouldn’t be following them, right? At the very least, he should have said something instead of just lurking.
But on their last stop, Florean Fortescue’s (because Cordelia kept whining about how hot it was and demanding Dobby get them some ice cream), the man in the purple suit didn’t go in after them. Draco was relieved at first, and ate his scoop of strawberry while asking Dobby if Draco could come next time he went out on errands.
Then, as they all left the shop to Apparate back to the Manor, Draco’s whole body locked up with magic.
His feet went first, stiffening mid-step, then his torso and arms and finally his head, before Draco could even draw a breath to scream. Then a hand came over his mouth and dragged him backward into the alleyway next door.
“Nice and quiet, nice and quiet.” Draco couldn’t see him, but he could smell him, smoky like scotch: the man in the purple suit. He was holding Draco tightly with both arms, breathing hard into Draco’s hair. “That’s it. Sweet little omega. Don’t worry, you’ll be just fine.”
Every muscle in Draco’s body was on fire as they strained to move, to thrash, to kick and bite. His heart threatened to break straight through his ribs for how hard it was beating at the wall of his chest. And the man in the purple suit just kept muttering:
“You smell like snowdrops, sweet boy, did you know? They tell stories about how enticing omegas are, but the reality exceeds all expectation. Lovely, lovely boy.”
The droning hum of fear in Draco’s ears grew and grew until it was too much, until Draco was so frightened that he could do nothing else but wish desperately to be away, away, away, he didn’t want to go, he didn’t want to go, please no, please no, please, please, please—
From behind, there came the sound of a great tearing followed by a wet gurgle. The spell holding Draco stiff shattered around him like glass, and Draco had already scrambled out of the alley before he felt the wet heat soaking through his dress—blood. He looked back; the man was supine on the ground, twitching and choking, purple suit soaked black.
The last thing Draco remembered was screaming. He would recall those next few days as indistinct, disparate images:
First, an aging beta Auror in fraying maroon robes. He was sitting next to Draco’s father in the lobby of a big, imposing Ministry building. At some point, Draco had been tucked in his mother’s lap; she was stroking his hair and shushing him as Draco shook and wheezed.
“It was just a burst of wild magic, by all accounts,” the Auror was saying. “A perfectly reasonable reaction on your son’s part, Lord Malfoy, under the circumstances. Certainly nothing the DMLE will pursue.”
“And the attacker?” his mother asked. “What of him?”
“‘Attacker’ is a strong word,” the Auror answered. “From what he was able to tell me from his bed in St. Mungo’s, he was just overcome by your son’s presence. He’d never encountered an omega before. He wasn’t prepared for how affecting the scent would be.”
His mother stiffened under the hands Draco had fisted in her dress. She was angry, but she didn’t speak.
“Unless you’d prefer to pursue charges, Lord Malfoy? I caution you, it would be an uphill battle. The law—”
“No, no,” his father said dismissively. “It’s that damn fool house-elf’s fault. He should know better than to bring an omega out in public like that. He was asking for trouble.”
The conversation continued, but Draco wouldn’t remember it.
His next clear memory, some days afterward, was waking up from a nightmare of disembodied hands crawling over his body and blood soaking through his nightgown. He gasped and choked in the close darkness of his bedroom and sat weeping until sunlight came crawling through the window.
“Father says you have to get up,” Cordelia said snarlingly when Draco didn’t show up for breakfast that morning. “He said to stop with the theatrics. Omegas have to be decorous, Draco.”
When Draco didn’t answer, Cordelia stomped her foot. “I’m an alpha! You have to do what I say!”
Then, some days after that, another memory asserted itself: the man in the purple suit came to the Manor.
Draco saw him through the archway connecting the vestibule to the sitting room and froze, just like his spell had done. All at once, the world went from hazy and gray to crystal clear and razor sharp. He was there, just sitting there, in Draco’s house, talking with his father over a bottle of brandy:
“… really can’t apologize enough,” the man said. He wasn’t in a purple suit anymore, but a robe, neatly pressed like he was trying to impress Father with it. “It was never my intent to hurt your precious omega.”
“He was not hurt,” Father answered, sounding bored. Draco was starting to tremble. “A bit shaken, perhaps, and dramatic about the whole thing, as omegas are wont to be, but not hurt.”
“That’s so good to know, Lord Malfoy, a great weight off my shoulders. I wanted to ask, I—” The man faltered, cleared his throat. “I know it’s so early, but do you have a courting list for him yet?”
His father snorted. “A pureblood omega with his sort of features? Of course I do. There were three alphas on it the day he was born. These days it’s over a dozen.”
No, Draco thought, mouth flooding with bitter fear. Father wouldn’t do this, would he? He wouldn’t put the man who tried to steal him on Draco’s courting list, surely?
“I don’t suppose you’d consider adding my name to it? I can’t boast your family’s exceptional pedigree, but I am a wealthy man—I’ve made a fortune in Muggle textiles, you see—I could pay a handsome sum for him when he comes of age.”
“You have very stiff competition,” was Father’s disinterested answer, “but I suppose…”
Draco did not stay to hear the rest of the conversation. He raced up to his room, shut and locked the door.
That night, when his family was asleep, Draco snuck into his father’s laboratory and stole reagents, selecting them based on the way their magic crackled. Dragon liver, nightshade, sopophorous, belladonna: all of them powerful, valuable, and deadly. Draco had made a promise to his mother not to do magic like this again, but how else was he supposed to protect himself? No one was going to do it for him, clearly, not even his own father.
He put all the stolen reagents in a bowl of onyx and burned them. The flames were bright blue: the magic had accepted his bargain.
“Keep him away from me,” Draco whispered, and the magic of the Manor hissed and shuddered around him. “He will not set foot in this place again. He will not touch me again.”
The flames extinguished; the reagents were gone, nothing but gray ashes.
Draco was not troubled by nightmares again. The man in the purple suit never came back.
Draco had just turned eleven the month before when he got his acceptance letter from Hogwarts. Somehow, one piece of paper nearly sent the Malfoy Manor crumbling around them.
“This is an outrage!” his father bellowed, shaking the letter in his clenched fist. Draco didn’t know who he was yelling at. His mother was staring meekly down at her lap, Cordelia giggling and kicking her feet as she watched him carry on, and Draco—well, Draco was sitting on the ottoman, pretending to embroider. “An omega, attending Hogwarts? Since when does Hogwarts enroll omegas? Have they no respect for the old ways?”
“I believe there was a law passed,” his mother said, but his father didn’t appear to be listening, because he shouted right over her:
“It’s bad enough that they kowtow to Mudbloods and blood traitors—bad enough that it’s Christmas and Easter break, those rubbish Muggle holidays, tawdry facsimiles of a superior culture—what happened to Yule? To Beltane? Must they denigrate the culture that built their wretched institution in every possible way?”
His mother remained silent. Incensed, Father crumpled the letter in his hand and burned it to cinders with a wandless burst of magic. Cordelia laughed and clapped. Draco fussed with the embroidery hoop in his lap like he was stitching, even though he wasn’t. He didn’t even have a needle. He just wanted a reason not to engage. He knew there was nothing he could say to improve the situation. An omega must always be decorous—which in practice, Draco was coming to understand, just meant silent.
“Where would he even sleep?” his father asked, with a tone that suggested he didn’t want to hear an answer. “Alpha students can’t be expected to contain themselves around him for long stretches, even before his first estrus—a broom closet, then? A shed outside, like that oaf giant who keeps the game?”
Cordelia was still giggling. “You’ll have to sleep in a shed, Draco,” she whispered, and jabbed him hard in the knee with her finger. Draco frowned and used the embroidery hoop to swat her hand away.
Eventually, Father collapsed in his usual armchair. Dolly was quick to attend him with a tumbler of his favorite Scotch, which he drank in a long pull. By the time the glass was empty, he’d sagged back, long legs stretched out toward the fire.
“There’s nothing to do about it, I expect,” he said. “My son, my omega, attending Hogwarts. They’ll eat him alive.”
“They’ll eat you alive, Draco,” Cordelia jeered, just before— “Ow! Father, Draco kicked me!”
But Father appeared to be too melancholy to hear: “I suppose we’ll have to get him a wand. Merlin preserve me—an omega of his breeding with a wand? Half his courting list will evaporate when they hear.”
Draco hadn’t been sure how to feel about the idea of going to Hogwarts, but at the mention of a wand, excitement rose up through his chest, light and effervescent. He didn’t know omegas were permitted to have wands. His mother didn’t have one, nor had she gone to Hogwarts, unlike her two beta sisters. The idea of casting magic—proper magic, like his father—filled him with eager anticipation.
And the more he thought about it—Hogwarts term went from fall through spring, didn’t it? All that time away from Father, out of the Manor—it felt dangerously close to freedom.
Draco stared hard into his embroidery hoop. He let his long hair fall across his face to hide his smile.
Perhaps this could be the start of something good.