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He ends up taking the bed between Neville and the wall, and this is another moment where he questions the wisdom of his choices. “Did Gryffindor hate his students?” he asks mournfully as he unpacks his trunk.

Neville smiles, because he actually understands the joke, while Ron bristles and everyone else just looks confused. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He has a catty answer on the back of his tongue but ends up biting it back instead. He can’t be like his father now, in this moment, sneering and domineering and forcing respect out of everyone he meets. He has to be his mother, blending and changing and cajoling her surroundings until they suit her. “The Slytherin dorms are two people to a room, and if there’s an odd number then someone gets their own,” he says. He was planning on sharing his room with Blaise. Either Vincent or Gregory would have been good too, but of course they wanted to room with each other. Theo was kind of intense, and possibly wanted to kill him, so he were fine with letting him have his own room.

Blaise and Theo will get on fine though, even if Blaise ends up having a lot less fun without Draco as a roommate. Although it’ll be quieter.

Which brings him to his second point. “How am I supposed to get any studying done here?” he asks mournfully. “You lot don’t seem the studious type.”

Is he really going to have to study in the library, where everyone can see him? No, that simply won’t do. He’ll have to find someplace else. It’s a big castle, surely there’s an unused room somewhere.

Dean says, “Now you sound like my mother,” and Seamus cracks a grin too.

Ron and Harry are glaring at him. “Studying?” Ron repeats in disgust. “Why would you want to do that?”

Is this a trick question? “Because we’re at a school? To learn?”

“Merlin,” Ron mutters, shaking his head, and crawls into his bed and takes out a pack of exploding snap without even bothering to unpack, a game which everyone else quickly joins. How does he expect to get ready in the morning with all his things packed away? Unless he plans to get up early, but something tells Draco that he’s just not the type.

Whatever. Befriending Harry Potter is second to his primary goal, which is graduating the top of their year. After he finishes his clothes he goes on his books, but the amount he brought it just far too many to fit on the small shelves the Gryffindor’s get. He would have had a whole bookshelf in the Slytherin dorms.

“Here,” Neville whispers and points to his own empty shelf. “Y-you can, uh, put them there. I-if you want.”

“Thanks,” he says, and is getting tired of saying it already, but puts the rest of his books on Neville’s shelf anyway.

They’re still playing when he finishes, and no one invites him to play with them, and he can’t risk Neville doing it, so he draws the curtains around his bed and pretends to go to sleep, listening to them laugh and play and get to know each other just a couple feet away, and thinks about how he could be hanging out with his own friends right now, but instead he’s here, listening to all the fun he’s not having.

The first spell he’s going to master is the silencing charm.

He wakes up before all the other boys the next morning and gets ready silently, doing his best not to wake everyone up. He hopes this is just because they stayed up late the night before, but he’s not counting on it, and he mourns the loss of Blaise as his roommate. They’re both early risers, so they would have woken at the same time and gotten ready while chatting and made their beds with the same impervious flicks of their wand. They were planning on it, were looking forward to it, and now, well.

That’s most of the reason he’s being so considerate as to not wake any of his dormmates. He doesn’t exactly want an audience this morning.

Draco puts on his red and gold tie, smooths his hand over the lion crest across his chest, hoists his book bag over his shoulder, and goes down to the great hall.

The Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables are basically empty this early in the morning, but there are a fair amount of Slytherins, and the Hufflepuff table is nearly full. He detours from his own table to go to the Slytherin one, stopping awkwardly in front of the first years. “Hey.”

Blaise is frowning and Pansy looks like she wants to rip his head off with her bare hands. Her being here is a bad sign, because she’s not an early riser, which means she’s here specifically to yell at him. Greg and Vinny wouldn’t get out bed early for love or money so he’ll have to wait to hear whatever opinions they have about his house.

Daphne, his least favorite chess opponent but currently the best person in the world, leans around them to grin at him. “Get a bit lost last night, didn’t you Draco?”

“Something like that,” he says. “Look, I can explain.”

“I cannot believe,” Pansy hisses, “that you’re abandoning us so you can cling to Harry Potter’s coattails.”

Well, it’s not like he would be friends with them if they were stupid. “Okay, one, I’m not abandoning you, Slytherins and Gryffindors have like all their classes together anyway and I promise I’ll still double check all your homework,” she looks slightly mollified at that, so at least some of her anger was related to her projected academic loss, “and two, if anyone’s riding on anyone’s coattails, it’s Harry on mine. You know he didn’t even know he was a wizard until a couple weeks ago? It’s like giving a baby a wand just to see what happens.” He may have closed his curtains, but he hadn’t gone asleep right away, and he was up more than long enough to overhear Harry talking to the others.  

“Dad was so mad when we did that to Lucas. Mum thought it was funny, though,” Pansy muses.

“It was funny,” he says, because it was. Lucus, barely a year old, had turned the whole east win of the manor yellow, and hey, now his parents knew for sure he wasn’t a squibb, so really they were doing them a favor. “Come on, you know what my dad told me to do, I’m just following orders.”

Blaise finally relents, shoulders drooping. “I’m sharing a room with Theodore for seven years! It was supposed to be us, Draco!”

Draco thinks back to the many conversations they’ve had about how Theodore is possibly a psychopath, and the five boys he’s forced to share a small space with, and says, “Blaise, believe me when I say, I think I envy you.”

Blaise tries to raise an eyebrow, trying to look as cool and aloof as his mum, but he doesn’t quite manage it, biting his bottom lip to stifle a laugh and failing.

Some of the uneasiness he’s been carrying around settles. He’s not doing this alone. Even if all of Gryffindor hates him forever, he still has his friends.

“OI, MALFOY!” He turns, wide eyed, and one of the Weasley twins is waving at him. He cups his hands around his mouth, even though the great hall isn’t nearly full of noisy enough to justify it. “YOU’RE AT THE WRONG TABLE!”

“You know,” Pansy says, “I think the consequences of your actions are punishment enough.”

He rolls his eyes and elbows her before throwing a quick smile at Blaise and Daphne and going over to the Gryffindor table.

His table.

(thank you to anonymous for donating!)

Severus and McGonagall keep whispering at mealtimes and looking at him.

It’s very distracting.

He stays after the next potion class, waving Neville along when he tries to wait for him. He hesitates, clearly pulled between wanting to get as far away from Severus as quickly as possible and not wanting to leave Draco alone with him.

Sometimes Neville is so endearing it’s painful.

“It’ll be fine, I promise,” he says. Neville shoots him one more worried look then hurries out the door.

Draco shuts the door then turns to his godfather and crosses his arms. “Okay, what gives?”

Severus doesn’t pretend to misunderstand him. It’s one of the reasons Draco like him so much – he never acts like that Draco is less intelligent than he is. “Minerva is worried about you.”

“What? Does she think I’m going to curse one of her precious lion cubs in their sleep?” he demands.

“In case you haven’t noticed, you are one of her precious lion cubs, thanks to your father’s idiotic instructions.” His godfather hadn’t been pleased about Draco not being in his house. “She’s worried that you’re having trouble making friends.”

“I have plenty of friends,” he says, and he does. There’s all his friends in Slytherin, and Susan Bones has latched onto him as a study partner. He’s known Lisa Turpin and Sue Li since he was a toddler, and they’re just as annoying and friendly as they’ve ever been. They’ve already talked about how they can break into the school’s broom closet to get some flying in before their first official lesson, which seems like a waste for anyone who’s not a muggleborn. Who doesn’t know how to ride a broom, honestly.

Severus is unmoved. “She’s worried that you’re having trouble making friend in your house.”

Ah.

“There’s Neville,” he says. “I think maybe the Weasley twins too, but they might just be acting friendly with me to piss Ron off.”

Lavender is nice too, but she’s nice like she’s keeping all her options open and may decide to be mean later and hasn’t yet made up her mind, so he’s a bit wary of her.

Severus only raises an eyebrow.

“It’s only been a couple of weeks,” he says. “I’ll figure it out. Stop staring at me in the great hall, it’s not helping.”

“You’re aware your housemates being close minded little brats is a judgement on them and not you, right?” he asks.

Draco smiles. He almost hugs him, but he knows Severus hates it. He endures it sometimes, as he considers it his duty as his godfather to hug him occasionally, but he’s never thrilled about it. “Hey, that’s my house you’re talking about. Watch it.”

Severus just rolls his eyes and sends him on his way.

Draco nearly walks right into Neville as he steps out of the potions classroom

“What are you still doing here?” he asks, looking around at the deserted hallway.

Neville shrugs, but gives him a once over, like he’s looking to see if he’s been maimed in the last couple minutes. “Er, n-nothing.”

“We’re going to be late for charms,” he says, hopelessly fond in spite of himself.

He may not have the quantity of friends he’d like, but the quality is rather excellent.

(thank you @hantasticc for donating!)

Draco hadn’t thought that his first friend in their year besides Neville would be Hermione Granger, of all people. He’d thought she was kind of embarrassing and way too high strung, personally.

But there was one positive thing about her that’s rather undeniable.

She’s brilliant.

He keeps bumping into her in the library, since he still hasn’t scoped out a good part of the castle to hide away and study in. Clearly he can’t do it in his dorm or the common room, since everyone is loud. There are plenty of Gryffindors who study in the common room and he doesn’t understand how they do it, he can barely hear himself think in there most days. Maybe he should ask Percy. Draco never sees him studying in there, so surely he’s found a better spot to do it in? But it’s also possible he doesn’t study at all and just absorbs his knowledge through osmosis, so maybe he wouldn’t have any advice to offer.

It’s a pity he can’t just spend a couple hours a day hiding away in the Slytherin common room. Well, he could, he’s known where is it is for years and it’s not like his godfather is going to care if he’s there, even if his tie is red and gold. But he can’t do that, because if people just think he’s a Slytherin in Gryffindor, then they’ll treat him like a Slytherin, and this whole thing is pointless.

Which means he spends a lot of time in the library with Hermione Granger.

It’s fine, they’re doing a great job at ignoring each other, up until a shadow falls over his reading light and he looks up to see her scowling at him. “Are you almost done with that? I need it.”

She’s pointing at the book he’s reading, which is an advanced tome on the healing properties of various magical insects. “You don’t.”

There’s no way this can be relevant to anything she’s reading. It’s barely relevant to him, they just have a potion with acromantula hair coming up, and he knows Severus is going to grill him with as many too complicated, ridiculous questions as he can think of. Just because Draco’s his godson doesn’t mean he takes any less joy from taking points from Gryffindor, and he expects Draco to know the answer, unlike everyone else who he’s mostly just harassing. An unfortunate side effect of receiving potion lectures as bedtime stories since before he could speak.

“I do,” she insists. “This recipe for a vanishing potion doesn’t make any sense, and I think it might if I read that. Can you just give it to me when you’re done?”

His eyebrows push together. “What recipe are you looking at? It’s a straightforward potion.” It’s actually the same potion he’s reading this book for, but the brewing is hardly complicated. It’s a first year potion, after all.

Her scowl deepens. She stomps over to her bag, pulls out their potion book, and then flips it open to a page she’s bookmarked and drops it front of him.

Merlin, she’s so dramatic.

It’s the beginning of beautiful friendship filled with arguing every bit of academic minutia they come across and Neville trying and failing to keep the peace between them.

(thank you @oldschoolslytherin and @snekyeggs and anonymous for donating!)

On one hand, Draco is excited about their first flying lesson, because flying is brilliant. On the other hand, their first lesson is sure to be incredibly boring, because it’s basic stuff like getting a broom to listen to you and not falling off. Still, flying is flying.

Both the Gryffindors and Slytherins are assembled on the field, and instead of talking to his friends in Slytherin, he finds himself in the unenviable position of having to reassure Hermione, who looks like they’re somewhere truly terrible, like history of magic, rather than a flying lesson. “It’s easy,” he tells her, “All you have to do is not fall off. Right, Neville?”

Neville jumps then looks down at his shoes. “O-oh. Um. I’ve never f-flown before.”

Draco’s not thrilled with his stutter. They’d been working on that. “Neville! Why not?”

He shrugs. “I’m clumsy. Gran said I’d c-crack my head open.”

Bloody hell. “Didn’t your uncle push you down the stairs to see if you were a squib and you just bounced down like you were made of rubber?”

“Yeah,” he answers, looking a little green at the memory.

“Then why would you crack your head open if you fell off your broom?” he demands. He’s aware that’s not exactly how it works, that possibly his wandless magic wouldn’t save him if he’d fallen on his head, but it’s the principal of the whole thing. He turns to the rest of the Gryffindors. “You’ve all flown, haven’t you? Not you, Harry, obviously.”

Harry looks offended at that for some reason, which, really, he was raised by muggles, why would he have flown before?

Ron, Dean, and Lavender nod, but Seamus and Parvati shake their head. Great.

“Well, don’t worry about it,” he says, turning back to Hermione. “I’ve been flying for years and it’s not that hard. You’ll be fine.”

“Indeed she will, Mister Malfoy,” Madame Hooch says from right behind him, and he only doesn’t jump due to his cousin Luna thinking it’s the funniest thing ever to hide behind things and try and scare him at family dinners. “Now, everyone stand next to a broom, put your dominant hand over it, and say Up! Be very firm!”

“UP!” says a chorus of voices. Every broom on the Slytherin side rises smoothly into their riders’ hands. His, Harry’s, and Ron’s do the same, but Dean, Seamus, Lavender, and Parvati have to say it a couple more times to get their brooms to float begrudgingly into their hands.

Neville’s just turns over sullenly and Hermione’s doesn’t react at all.

“You have to be firm,” he hisses. “The broom can tell if you’re scared, so you can’t let it know. If you could stop being scared, that’d be good too, but lying about it might be easier.”

“You should worry less about your classmates and more about yourself, Mister Malfoy,” Madam Hooch says, her eyes narrowed in disapproval. “You’re holding your broom with the wrong hand. Have you been doing that incorrectly for years as well?”

His face burns and he goes to switch hands, but Hermione says hotly, “He’s left handed! You said to summon it with your dominant hand, not your right hand. If you’d wanted him to summon it with his right hand, that’s what you should have said.” It’s easily the rudest Draco has ever seen her be to a professor. She scowls and puts her hand over her broom. “Up!”

It jumps promptly into her hand this time, probably afraid that if it didn’t, she might yell at it too.

“Yes, well,” Madame Hooch says, suddenly not looking at him, “very good, Miss Granger. Mister Longbottom, if you would.”

He swallows, pushes his shoulders back, and says, “Up!”

There’s a moment when nothing happens, and then the broom slowly rises into his hand.

Draco doesn’t cheer because that would be kind of lame of him, but he smiles when the other Gryffindors do.

Then they’re just hovering a couple feet off the ground which, boring, but he can kind of see the point of it when half of his house seems unsteady on their brooms. Except, of course, something goes wrong.

They’re only supposed to be a couple feet off the ground, but Neville keeps rising.

“Mr. Longbottom!” Madame Hooch shouts, “Stop that and get down here!”

Neville panics and grabs the front part of his broom, pushing down, which is of course is the worst thing he could have done. It sends him shooting upward way too quickly, and Draco rushes after him. He doesn’t think about it, he just goes, and he’s familiar enough with a broom that he can maneuver it thoughtlessly. He’s nearly up caught up to Neville, already reaching out a hand to steady his friend’s broom, when Neville loses his balance and falls.

The one thing Draco had told him not to do!

He dives for him, but the gravity is faster than he is, and Neville is screaming. He grabs the handle of his broom tightly in one hand and jumps off his own broom, reaching out to grab Neville’s hand. He feels Neville’s shoulder pop out when he catches him, but there’s not much he can do about it. He’s holding both his and Neville’s weight with just one hand, and it’s pretty much all he can do not to drop him as they gently float the last dozen or so feet to the ground.

It’s not until Neville is standing and Draco’s feet touch the ground that he can hear everything around him, that he hears his classmates shouting or notices Madame Hooch’s pale face as she looks Neville over, prodding delicately at his shoulder. “We’ll have to go to Madame Pomfrey for that dear, nothing for it, come along now.”

He should have caught him sooner.

Neville offers him a watery smile and says, “Better my shoulder than my head, Draco. Thanks.”

“Your gran may have had a point,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. Actually, his shoulders are kind of sore too, but not enough for him to go to Pomfrey about it.

“Mister Malfoy,” Madam Hooch says, and great, he’s going to get a lecture about flying when he wasn’t supposed to, “thirty points to Gryffindor.”

He’s still blinking in confusion when she turns and shuffles Neville towards the castle.

Everyone is staring at him, and usually he loves being the center of attention, but not like this. Blaise throws something into the air and catches it again. “Longbottom dropped this. Fancy a game?”

Draco’s confused for a moment before he sees it’s a Remembrall, one of Neville’s gifts from his grandmother that seemed to cause his more grief than not. He grins. “Oh, yeah. Definitely.”

“That doesn’t belong to you!” Ron says crossly.

Draco rolls his eyes. “We’ll give it back. It’s not like he’s using it right now, is he?” And actually, if they manage to accidentally break it during the game, all the better. It’ll give Neville one less thing to worry over.

“We’re not supposed to fly without the instructor here to supervise,” Hermione says disapprovingly, because nothing gives her as much joy as ruining his fun.

He nods seriously. “That’s true, but consider this – Hooch isn’t here and it’ll be a great practical learning experience. Also, she never said that, you just know that because you read Hogwarts, A History, so it doesn’t count.”

She doesn’t seem convinced, but doesn’t continue arguing, so he’ll count that a win.

“Slytherins versus Gryffindors?” Theo proposes.

No, because he can already here all the snide comments he’ll get from his housemates about him being on the wrong team. And he wants to win, and all the Slytherins have way more flying experience than the Gryffindors. “Girls versus boys.”

“No way!” Pansy says. “That’s not fair. There are nine of you and six of us.”

“I’ll sit out,” Vinny volunteers instantly. He hates flying. “I’ll be referee.”

Hermione is clearly pissed that that hadn’t occurred to her.

“And I’ll play on the girls’ team,” Draco says. “Then it’ll be seven against seven. Okay?”

Pansy narrows her eyes, then says, “Okay, deal. Rules?”

Blaise tosses the Remembrall into the air again. “Let’s play catch. You can’t hold the Remembrall for more than five seconds and no spells while we’re in the air. Winner is whatever team has the Remembrall when Hooch gets back. Getting caught breaking the rules is an automatic loss.”

Hermione looks pleased at the last bit at least.

Hermione and Greg are hovering on the perimeter just in case it comes their way, but aren’t interest in chasing it, which is fine because the teams are still even. It quickly becomes clear that this is mostly a competition between him and Harry.

Draco’s the best at throwing it, but Harry’s scarily good at catching it, especially considering this is his first time a broom. Harry always catches it if anyone but Draco throws it, so the girls’ strategy just becomes getting it to Draco and then flying way wider than anyone else can throw. Obviously he feels bad that Neville got hurt, but it’s way more fun than the typical first flying lesson, although unfortunately they’re all a little too good to drop the Remembrall and not have someone catch it, so that part of his plan doesn’t work out.

Vinny had been on the lookout for Madam Hooch, so he hadn’t noticed a tabby cat sitting on the sidelines.

Draco blames him when McGonagall makes Harry the youngest seeker in a century.

He’s only a little bit mollified when McGonagall says she would have offered Draco a chaser position if one had been open.

Harry and Draco

Happy Pride Month  🏳️‍🌈

To his delight the girl he once wanted to marry before her untimely death… appeared before him. But soon she turned sad and cold because she did not belong to the mortal world.

ref.

For Enemies…

Draco

this is so gorgeous

I’m back!!!!!!!!!!! Enjoy this tatted Harry I drew 😍

If you wanna see my artwork that got taken down check me out on Patreon!!!

Patreon.com/cieliavalentine

Distance…

He doesn’t understand why there’s random people watching his auror training. It’s just too annoying.

[ig: @potterbyblvnk]

here’s the link to donate to george floyd’s official memorial fund if you are able to contribute. if you can’t donate, please share. being black shouldn’t be a death sentence.

AND HERE’S THE LINK TO SIGN THE PETITION SO THAT THE FOUR OFFICERS WHO MURDERED GEORGE FLOYD BE CHARGED WITH MURDER.

If something is troubling you today, here’s harry potter laughing in your dashboard just to light it up for a second 😘

glowing like the setting sun.

Ginny - colored

I know this is a low blow, but I had to do it (? Hope you like it!!

Just coloring my art.

they are ..allowed to lie together in this post

Some Hogwarts Era Draco