Draco Malfoy
They said professorship would tame my pride. Instead, it has simply given it better stationery.
A vellum catalogue lies open across my desk— “Eligible Research Assistants, 1895-A Cohort.” The ink is still tacky; administrative elves must have set it here minutes ago. Unlike past years, assignments aren’t fixed. Professors may request whomever they please, provided they submit rationale by midnight Friday.
I skim names— Arabel Bones (bright), Silas Montagu (bloodshot), Padma Kapoor (alarmingly qualified)— and then my quill stops, mid-drift:
Tessa Carter Country of Origin: United States Specialisms: Advanced Defensive Charms, Complex Potion Stabilisers, Banshee-class Duelling Certification.
Rain taps the mullioned glass; a pulse answers behind my sternum. Tessa Carter—the transfer who arrived in third year, full of hurricane confidence and unwavering loyalty to Potter & Co. The girl I hexed, mocked, froze to the flagstones; the girl who never once retaliated with anything but tight-lipped contempt.
Eight years gone, and I can still see her freckles.
My first thought is not academic. It is atonement. If I can haul her into my laboratory, offer her the premiere post, give her credit on any paper we publish— perhaps the ledger of past cruelties will finally balance.
I dip quill, scrawl the official form:
Requesting Assistant: Carter, Tessa — PRIMARY Reason: Candidate’s skill-set uniquely complements current dragon-blood polymer study. (Privately: Because I owe her a childhood.)
The self-inking quill stalls after the signature. Why not add weight? I fold a separate parchment, write in longhand:
Miss Carter, Professor Malfoy here. I have formally requested you as my assistant. Before you reject the notion, hear me out. There are words I should have spoken years ago. Give me one conversation—tomorrow, ten o’clock, Lab Five—then decide. —D.M.
The owl departs into a slash of October-cold rain. I almost feel lighter.
Morning arrives, bringing storm clouds and an ominous hush in the corridor. Slughorn—never one to miss gossip—ambushes me outside the faculty lounge, moustache twitching with glee.
“Draco, m’boy, ambitious choice! You do realize Miss Carter threatened to hex any professor who pulls strings to ‘own’ her?” He pats my shoulder, faux-sympathetic. “Best of luck.”
Hex? Own? I grit my teeth. What exactly did she say?
Two Slytherin postgrads slink by, failing to hide their smirks. Overheard fragments: “—Carter called it pathetic—” “—said Malfoy must think guilt buys obedience—”
The paper-thin relief of last night shrivels. She didn’t even wait to see me; she’s already broadcasting disdain through the castle like a Wireless charm.
So that is her reply. Public humiliation… familiar territory, really.
I return to my office, tear the duplicate request form from my drawer, and— instead of discarding it— I fill out two more identical copies, the bureaucratic maximum.
Requests Submitted:
Tessa CarterTessa CarterTessa Carter
Let the board see my persistence. Let her see it. If she wishes to label me a villain, I’ll dress the part with bespoke precision.
I pen a new note—no flowery invitations this time.
Miss Carter, Three formal requests now bear your name. Whether you serve under me is the Headmistress’s prerogative, not yours. Should circumstance assign you elsewhere, rest assured our paths will still cross—Hogwarts is small, and memories are long. —Professor D. Malfoy
I blot the ink hard enough to speckle the parchment. Outside, thunder cracks like a starting pistol.
Fine. No absolution, then. If she wants the ghost of Draco Malfoy the Bully, she’ll have him—refined, adult, and infinitely more resourceful.
The war taught me remorse. Rejection, apparently, teaches me relapse.
Midnight’s deadline approaches, and for the first time since taking this post, I feel fully awake.
Insomnia stitches everything together: the parchment rustle that never ends, the hour-glass drip of strength-restoring potions I keep not drinking, the war in my head replaying on higher speed. By two in the morning I abandon pretense, shove quills into a drawer, and stalk out of my office before the torchlight can accuse me of failure.
The castle at this hour feels peeled of skin—bare nerves and echo. Suits of armour snore; portraits mutter in half-sleep. I aim for the faculty corridor where my bed, theoretically, exists.
Half-way there, a sharp clatter ricochets off the stone. A stack of books and loose folios avalanches across the flagstones, parchment fluttering like terrified moths.
Reflex overrides exhaustion; I kneel, start scooping quills, vials, a dog-eared copy of Moste Potente Philtres—
“Thanks, I’ve got it—”
The voice is richer than memory, American vowels still curling the a in got. I glance up.
She straightens, hands brushing dust from midnight-black robes. No freckles; her skin is porcelain lit by moonwash from a lancet window. Hair once sun-streaked chestnut now spills ink-dark to her shoulder blades. And the eyes—Merlin—emerald green, unnaturally bright, like they’ve been re-honed for war.
“Tessa Carter,” I hear myself say, more statement than greeting.
She blinks once. Those emerald irises narrow to surgical slits. “Professor Malfoy.”
I gather the last folio, stand, pass it over. Our fingers don’t quite touch; she makes sure of that.
“You changed your hair.” Stupid observation, but words are smoke when one hasn’t slept.
“People do, after eight years.” She takes the folio, slots it against the others. “Some people change more than hair, I hear. Three request forms, was it?”
The smile I offer is razor-polite. “Thoroughness is a Slytherin virtue.”
“Obsession is a Slytherin vice.” She hefts her arm-load, turns as if to go, then pivots back. “Let’s clear the air, professor. I’ll pick my own post. No amount of paperwork will bully me into your lab—or into your conscience.”
There it is: the contempt Slughorn reported, rendered in flawless articulation. Something inside me—tightly leashed since breakfast—slips.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of touching your conscience, Carter. I simply know talent when I see it.” I let my gaze flick down her stack of books, linger half-a-beat too long. “Alchemy of the Hematite Soul? Bold reading for someone set on Herbology.”
Color flares in her porcelain cheeks—just a flicker, but I mark the hit. “Cross-disciplinary curiosity,” she counters, jaw tight. “Unlike single-minded obsession.”
“I prefer focus. It yields results.” I step closer; the corridor seems to shrink, echo thickening. “But if you’d rather fetch coffee for Flitwick, be my guest. Just remember who authored half the post-war regeneration protocols you’re so eager to study.”
Her nostrils flare; the emerald irises almost glow. “I also remember who froze my boots to the floor while Dementors circled overhead.”
Touché. The guilt sparks, but I smother it with a thin, cold grin. “We were children. Welcome to adulthood; the stakes are higher, the ice thicker.”
For a second I expect her wand. Instead, she exhales, a soft vicious laugh. “You haven’t changed a galleon, Malfoy. Headmistress will have my preference by dawn, in triplicate. Good night.”
She glides past, robes whispering like crows’ wings. At the stairwell she pauses just long enough to add, without turning, “Sleep well—oh, right, you don’t.”
The words land with surgical precision. Then she’s gone, boots clicking down stone.
I stand motionless, listening until the echoes fade. My pulse is a thunderclap in an empty cathedral.
Apology is dead; war-time reflex lives. Fine.
Let the assistant request board drown in paperwork; let Carter burn emerald in every corridor. If she wants open season, I’ll oblige—within professional decorum, of course.
I pivot toward the faculty quarters, mind already outlining tomorrow’s lecture draft on Polymer Encapsulation Safety. Footnote: Emotional variables in volatile mixtures—handle with gloves.
Sleep? Optional. Victory? Mandatory.
I ward the door, kick my boots into a corner, and collapse backward onto the mattress. The ceiling traces itself in torch-shadowed ribs, like the underbelly of some great stone beast. Sleep remains a rumour.
All I can see is her: porcelain skin, ink-slick hair, eyes the exact green of Slytherin silk—only brighter, as if they’ve been polished by rage. So the freckles are gone; of course they are. Eight years is a long time to sandpaper childhood off a face.
What gnaws me isn’t the freckles, though. It’s that missing semester.
Third week of sixth year she just—vanished. Morning roll call: “Carter, Tessa?” Silence. Granger whispered something to Potter; McGonagall’s mouth thinned, and class marched on. No explanation, no gossip worth the ink. Hogwarts hallways can ferment rumors overnight, yet the vats stayed curiously empty.
I remember pretending not to care, twirling my wand and calling her Yankee Doodle Disapparate. But some nights, even back then, I played the memory over: the way she’d seemed tired right before she left—dragging books heavier than her, rubbing her ribs when she thought no one watched.
Family scandal? Illness? I never found out, never asked. By the time she returned for NEWTs the freckles had already begun to fade, and the laugh that used to burst like fireworks had folded into something gun-metal quiet.
I’d chalked it up to war. Everything fell quiet that year.
Tonight the question resurfaces, sharp as a tincture spill: What if I was shouting hexes while she was fighting something I couldn’t see? Bullying is one art; bullying a wounded person is another, infinitely uglier craft. And I was too busy preening behind a silver badge to notice the difference.
I fling an arm across my eyes, try breathing exercises they taught in post-war therapy. In for four, hold, out for eight— It fails.
Because overlaying every scrap of shame is a brand-new, unwelcome pull. She’s stunning. Not in the butterbeer-warm way of old crushes, but in a “razor held to candlelight” way—dangerous, precise, strangely luminous. If she walked into my lab tomorrow I wouldn’t know whether to apologize or lock the door for safety—hers or mine, unclear.
Lightning flickers beyond the curtains. I picture her somewhere in the postgraduate dorms, quill flying, drafting triple-sealed preferences that explicitly exclude my name. The petty part of me smirks: the board loves my grant money; they’ll weigh my requests heavily. The human part of me winces: why am I still vying for proximity to a person who clearly despises me?
Because apology felt possible—until she looked at me. Because curiosity is venom. Because power games are easier than penitence. Because I’ve never solved the riddle of that missing semester and now I need the answer like oxygen.
A clock chimes half-past three. Torchlight gutters, throwing my shadow giant-long across the ceiling. I imagine slipping back into the corridor, marching to the owlery with yet another letter—No. Enough ink have we bled tonight.
I roll to my side, facing the wall, and order myself to sleep, but the stone is cold and the mattress may as well be a nest of bezoars. In the darkness Tessa Carter’s emerald gaze hovers, unblinking, accusing and compelling at once.
“You haven’t changed a galleon,” she said. Maybe she’s right. Maybe change is alchemy’s biggest lie.
Somewhere below, the castle’s plumbing groans—a slow heartbeat. Above that, my own pulse counts down to dawn, and to whatever fresh duel tomorrow brings.
Sleep never arrives. Only resolve.
If I can’t bury the past, I’ll exhume it properly—see what really happened that lost semester, exhume the cost, pay in full. And if the price is her hatred sharpened into open war?
So be it.
I spend the last hour before sunrise staring at the ceiling, wondering whether remorse and desire can coexist in the same crucible without blowing the room to rubble. I suspect I’m about to find out.
