Chapter Text
Prologue: A Beautiful Specimen of a Monster
The day Draco Malfoy turned was not the worst day of his life. In fact, considering the standards by which he ranked terrible days, it was more or less an average one, mundane even.
He sat in his tiny Ministry holding cell, nauseous and agitated, aching and feverish- all common symptoms of life as Draco Malfoy since he had been branded a Death Eater at age sixteen. The Ministry-assigned legal counsel visited, half-moon spectacles perched on the end of her arched nose, grey hair piled and pinned atop her head in ringlets, and dark, hooded eyes harsh.
He said little besides “hello,” “no, I didn't know what it meant,” “yes, I regret all of it,” and “thank you.” His mother, in the cell next to him, tried to interject several times on his behalf, and both the elder witch and Draco ignored her. Lucius was in Azkaban- he'd actually killed people, Draco had learned, during both wars- and would never get out.
Now that had been a pretty bad day. Learning that the man you idolized was as slimy a murdering coward as your school enemies had always claimed, was bad. Not as bad as the day he'd been Marked, or the day Voldemort had moved into Malfoy Manor, or the night he'd watched Dumbledore tumble over the edge of the Astronomy Tower, but close.
The common threads in his worst days, and even his average days now, seemed to be his ignorance, his powerlessness, and his weakness of character.
During the day before his first turn, a full month after he was bitten, he simply felt exhausted and ill. On night he became a monster, he merely felt weakness and bone-splintering pain. Not uncommon feelings in his day-to-day life. Expected. Mundane.
It was expected, too, that Draco Malfoy would be a pretty pathetic monster. The morning after his first transformation -exhausted, bleeding from his wrists and a few spots over his body where he must have scratched himself, or else just stretched beyond the capacity of his skin- Draco was treated to some reading material that all but confirmed his status in the eyes of the wizarding world.
The front page of The Daily Prophet featured a bold headline, Draco Malfoy Brought to Heel, above a large photograph of an average-sized werewolf, startlingly white and apparently docile, curled in a ball as it watched a veritable parade of people file by. Its ears flickered back and forth, and once its head lifted in a mournful-looking howl before it turned away from the open bars of its cage. The unimaginative reporter outlined Draco's Death Eater history, frankly making him look much more successful than he'd ever actually been in his service to the Dark Lord, calling his new affliction ‘poetic justice,’ and, at one point referring to him as a ‘beautiful specimen of a monster.’ A domesticated werewolf, docile despite not even receiving wolfsbane potion while in holding. Weak. Pathetic.
No, the day Draco Malfoy officially, and very publicly, became a werewolf was not the worst day of his life. Even if it had been, he was too exhausted to care.
With each passing week, the exhaustion increased until days bled together and he stopped noticing much of anything. But, somehow, between fiendfyre and lycanthropy, Draco had gained an unexpected ally in the form of Hermione Granger.
At first, Draco was too tired to notice her frequent appearances outside his Ministry holding cell. Eventually, he noticed, but was too tired to care, even when she appeared with a laden trunk that sat outside his cell for what could have been days or weeks.
Then, one day, he found himself sitting in a train compartment across from Granger and Neville Longbottom, and next to Luna Lovegood, not entirely sure how he'd gotten there. Or what Lovegood was currently doing with her wand moving in a scrolling pattern around his crown.
“Luna,” he croaked, dazed and groggy, and flabbergasted.
“Hello, Draco. Don't mind me, I'm just working on your Wrackspurt problem.”
“Oh.” He'd never, not ever, believed a word of what Luna Lovegood had to say about anything. Still… “Thank you. How did I get here?”
Here was clearly the Hogwarts Express, but his vague recollections of Granger outside his Ministry cell, and his absence of any memory of Luna or Longbottom, weren’t particularly helpful in understanding how. He remembered Potter, dark and brooding as he avoided looking in Draco's direction, at some point during which he was on display for dozens of faceless individuals, but none of that explained his current circumstances.
“It was a rather impressive infestation, I'm not surprised you're a bit muddled,” Luna explained kindly, large eyes somewhat vacant.
They'd been the very same in the manor cellars: wide, light blue, absent but frighteningly knowing, as if she were present but also somewhere else. She'd been kind even in her captivity.
“I'm sorry, Luna.” It came out before he realized the truth of it.
“I forgive you, Draco.”
She smiled at him, and suddenly she was sharp in his vision, crisp and glowing, and good. Something in him wiggled, like an over excited animal, and her smile grew. She smelled like radishes, earthy and spicy, and a little like river rocks in the sun. Draco inhaled again and sneezed, the thing in his chest near dancing as her eyes crinkled at the corners.
“You have a happy wolf, Draco.”
“Oh.” What did one say to that? “I… suppose?”
There was a choked sound from the bench across, and he turned to see Granger’s lips pressed together in an attempt to hold back a giggle as she turned a page of the Wizarding Law text she held.
“I assume I have you to thank for-” he searched for the right words but couldn't find many. “For being here?”
“You assume correctly.”
“Thank you.”
He didn't ask why or how, though he eventually learned both. He didn't waste the little energy he had on resentment or guilt or anxiety. Instead, as they passed the Glenfinnan Viaduct, Draco managed to fall asleep on what was likely one of the most important days of his life, though he didn’t know it at the time.