Chapter Text
"If brewed correctly," Professor Slughorn continued his lecturing, "the potion will allow a brief glimpse into the drinker's future. For ten minutes, you will be able to see through your future self's eyes, nothing more."
Draco sat patiently, as Malfoys did, his back straight and chin up. Eighth year potions was the same stuffy room down in dungeons, air filled with the same strange taste, the same fucking Potter sat making an arse of himself as he and Weasley twatted around instead of listening.
He ignored them, best he could despite years of sending harsh glares and muttering insults their way. He didn't want to think the war had mellowed him out. Didn't want to think about how the trauma of it all had sent him into such a shock he was barely even a shell of his old self.
Just wanted to think about potions. And passing his NEWTs. And leaving everything behind.
Slughorn cleared his throat, a side glance sent in Potter's direction, but otherwise continued talking. Because he wouldn't dare tell off the Saviour. Poor boy was already being doted on by every other professor, what was one more?
"Professor?" Granger started, Draco doing his best to ignore her. "The future that the potion shows us, is it something we can change?"
"A brilliant question, Miss Granger." Slughorn smiled. Draco could see him itching to give house points, despite the fact that Eighth years didn't technically have houses anymore. "The potion will show you one of many futures you may have, the one which is most likely to occur as you are at this moment. Trials have shown people who took the potion regularly throughout a period of time under controlled conditions showed that there are several options that you may see. But, for the majority of you, you will see the future most likely to occur given you carry on living as you are now."
Granger nodded, excited, and scribbled down notes on her parchment.
"Now," Slughorn continued, "You all have the recipes in your textbooks, page 76 if you will. You've a half hour to brew, you may begin now."
Draco waited for the immediate rush of students heading to the ingredients cupboard to pass before he followed, careful to keep a distance. His partner, Zabini, stayed put, getting out the tools they'd need. Draco was glad he hadn't been paired off with anyone insufferable.
They worked in silence, the two ex-Slytherins, only talking to confirm the next step of the potion. Cutting, grinding, weighing precisely, the motions coming as naturally to Draco as they had in previous years.
"Brew for three minutes?" Zabini asked quietly.
"Two and a half," Draco corrected. Zabini didn't question him, but he answered anyway. "You cut the rose petals a little too finely so we can compensate by-"
"I know you're a potions master at this point Draco but you don't need to lecture me. I trust you, right?"
Draco nodded firmly. "Right."
Zabini cleared their table up as Draco kept an eye on the cauldron, watching the simmering liquid begin to shimmer a translucent blue rather than the pale yellow it had earlier.
He felt a firm hand come down on his shoulder, startling him, as Slughorn peered over at their potion. "My, my, Mr Malfoy. I'd quite forgotten how excellent you were." Draco allowed himself to feel proud, only a little, as Slughorn announced to the class to use it as a reference for their own brews.
The hand left his shoulder, Slughorn finally going to grace Saviour Boy with his presence.
"Mr Potter," he began, disappointed, and Draco tuned him out.
Zabini raised his eyebrows at Draco. "See? Potions master," he sniggered. "I think you're going to be old Sluggie's favourite by the end of the year. Give Potter some time off at least."
Draco grimaced at the nickname of their professor, but agreed with the sentiment about Potter. Bloody arse with his fucking saviour complex, probably enjoyed all the emotional fondling he was getting.
"Er, sorry Malfoy," came the irritating voice from beside him. Draco worried he'd summoned the bugger by accident.
He looked to his right, seeing Potter with his Weasel in tow.
"Merlin above, what a ghastly nightmare I must be having. Zabini, if I die tell my mother I love her."
"Slughorn said we can't use our potion and to use yours instead," Potter said with a grim look.
"Can't have been that bad if it didn't explode." Draco shrugged, not really caring.
"Half of the ingredients were from the wrong page." Harry explained. "Ron was using 66, not 76."
"Ah." He looked to Zabini, who didn't seem to care, almost enjoying the tension that followed any Slytherin-Gryffindor interaction. "Go ahead, hopefully your future is miserable enough to make this worth the interaction."
The two Gryffindors muttered a thanks to him, very barely audible, ladling some of the potion into a vial each before returning to their seats, as had been ordered by Slughorn.
Draco and Zabini shared one last look before doing the same, swallowing the translucent-blue liquid in one quick go.
He felt his body become heavy, managing to lean on the desk before his eyes fluttered shut.
"Papa!" A young blond boy yelled at his father, running over to the now much older Draco. The younger watched through the older eyes, unable to move as he heard himself reply.
"Now, now, Scorpius. What have I said?" He chided, in a way that could only remind Draco of his own uncaring father.
"Apologies, Papa. Malfoys do not yell." The boy looked positively heartbroken. Draco supposed he looked the same way at that age, too.
The dream flickered a little to another scene.
"Draco, dear, won't you fire that house-elf? It made my tea incorrectly again and I simply will not stand having it in the house anymore." Draco wanted to do a double-take at the woman's words, appalled by her hatred.
He couldn't, and heard his older self agree with a laugh, muttering something about a "bloody useless, vile thing."
And another scene, flickering into view. He couldn't tell when in his future he was, but he wasn't looking forward to it. Not after what he had seen so far.
They were standing at King's Cross Station, hundreds of other families swarming the place and saying heartfelt goodbyes, wrapping one another in warm, tight hugs.
The Malfoy family, naturally, was doing no such thing.
Draco watched the younger boy look around, eyes darting nervously back to his mother and father.
"Behave yourself, Scorpius. I shall not have you bring any dishonour on the Malfoy name." Draco could have laughed, as if his own family hadn't spent the past five years doing that themselves. As if Draco hadn't spent the past five years doing that.
"Yes, father." Ah, the boyish charm of 'Papa' had worn off already, it seemed. Already this boy was as separated emotionally from Draco as he was, Lucius.
"And you'll write often, to your mother and I. She will worry dreadfully about your well-being, and I need to know you're doing well in your studies."
The boy chewed his lip a little, nodding. He muttered another 'yes, father'. Draco wanted to leave.
The whistle for the train sounded and Draco - older Draco - nodded, seeing his son off with a gentle push to the back towards the train. His arm slipped around his wife's shoulder as the boy - their son, despite the way they treated him - left them behind.
"I suppose it's too late to have another, isn't it?" His wife asked, and he turned to look at her. Draco immediately recognised her as the younger Greengrass sister, despite how much older looked, and the sad aura she seemed to carry.
"Come now, Astoria. I was an only child and I enjoyed not having a sibling to annoy me." Well that was just a downright fucking lie. Draco was almost glad he could only watch. "Scorpius will make plenty of friends in Slytherin." Of course, Slytherin. Not at Hogwarts, but in his own house. Naturally.
A few more 'memories' of his future dashed by his eyes. They were dull, lifeless. It was clear he didn't love his wife, nor she, him. And their son was just as miserable as Draco had been. And from what he could gather, he didn't even have a job. Malfoys were rich, Merlin knows, but even Lucius worked at the Ministry while keeping up his part-time job and hobby of being the Dark Lord's biggest arse-kisser. Not that his father was something to aspire to be, but the point stood.
Draco woke with a start, finally glad to be out of it. There was a steady rise in noise in the room, Weasel being the loudest right away, but as he looked over he couldn't help but notice how miserable Potter was. Merlin, he seemed about as miserable as Draco felt.
"I don't know about you, Draco, but my future looks pretty fan-fucking-tastic if I say so myself," Zabini smiled happily, leaning back a little on his chair. "Draco?" He asked when there was no reply. "Not so good, then?"
"Miserable. And not the kind of miserable you lot seem to think I like. Just plain, fucking, miserable," Draco finally admitted.
Blaise grimaced a little. "Well," he said with a shrug, "if it makes you feel any better, Potter looks the same as you," he grinned.
It didn't. Because if Potter's future was shit, there were no fucking odds of Draco's being any better.
-- -- --
Draco couldn't sleep that night, still put off by the sight of his own future. Nor could he sleep the following night. He had owled his mother, but was still waiting for her reply.
He slipped out of bed, throwing his robes on over his pyjamas, and headed out of the eighth-year dorms. He wandered the castle, luck blessing him with a ghost-less route, and found himself up in the Astronomy tower.
Draco settled himself at the edge, his legs hanging down and his robes billowing out around him, and leaned back on his hands.
The night sky was clear, and the new moon gave the stars a chance to shine properly in the inky black. Draco gazed up at them, listing constellations and stars as he saw them.
"Persues... Gemini..." The was a slight breeze wishing through the tower, and he huddled his robes around him a little. "Orion," he saw, following the leg down before, "Sirius."
He stopped, keeping his gaze among the stars as he did. There was a pair of eyes watching him, he could sense them. The same way he had sensed them for years before.
"If you're here to hex me or shove me off the edge of the tower, Potter, do it now, please."
"I've had plenty of chances to kill you, Malfoy. 'M sure I'd have done it already if I wanted to. Gryffindor courage and all that." Came that bloody voice. Draco rolled his eyes, almost sad Potter couldn't see. "Why are you here?"
"None of your fucking business, Potter," he spat the name out, almost having missed it after months of not speaking to the bloke. He sighed, gaze falling to the forest around the castle. "Couldn't sleep," he admitted.
He heard a huff of breath, a silent laugh no doubt, from Potter, who sat beside him. Draco almost gaped at him - not that Malfoys gape - seeing a floating head.
"Right, sorry," Potter laughed, revealing the rest of his body as he swished the fabric away from himself. "Invisibility cloak," he grinned sheepishly.
"Why are you here, oh dear Saviour?" Draco returned the question. Malfoy manners, and all.
"Couldn't sleep either. Though," he began with a lighter tone, "at least tonight I wasn't woken up by nightmares. Which is a first."
"Makes two of us." Dear Merlin above, Draco had something in common with Potter. A Cruciatus curse would be less painful than this.
"It's that potion we took the other day." Merlin above, had Draco asked him? Had he accidentally asked Potter something about himself? "Just can't stop thinking about it." Would it be rude of Draco to leave? Because Malfoys don't just up and leave, but they certainly don't listen to scruffy, glasses-wearing pricks prattling on like Potter does.
"You looked miserable," Draco found himself saying. "Not happy with Weaslette popping out some Potter-Weasley triplets for you? Or did you die in some heroic fucking feat and not get to see a future?"
"You looked miserable too so it's not just me," Potter argued. "Did your pureblood marriage contract not look so great?"
Draco sensed they might both be right.
Potter sighed. Oh Merlin he was going to talk wasn't he?
"I did see a future, so you can fuck off with that assumption." Yes. Yes he was going to talk. Draco considered jumping off the side of the tower, only didn't because he would miss his mother terribly if he was stuck at Hogwarts as a ghost. "I was married to Gin, though. Had three kids. James, Albus, and Lily. Loved them, I think. Loved them to death. Had a good job, too. I'm going to be an Auror, apparently.
"We lived at Grimmauld Place, redecorated it all properly and got rid of the misery that permeates through the place."
"Is that not what you wanted, Potter? Wanted a fourth kid, or something?" Draco sneered. At least Potter had a fucking job in his future.
"No I... I was miserable. I must have looked it too, apparently. But I didn't love Gin, I don't even want to consider marrying her right now because she"-
"She's a ginger."
"Because she's like a sister to me." Harry corrected.
"So why'd you see that in your future, if you don't even like her? Why not some other lass? Saviour boy struggling to get laid? Prophet would have a field day with that one."
"Didn't you hear Slughorn? The future we saw was if we carry on our lives as they are. And, I don't think I ever technically broke-up with Gin. Just left her hanging during the war." Harry sighed again. "What about yours, then?"
"Pretty much what you expect. Pureblood marriage contract with Greengrass. Blond little Malfoy kid running around. Apparently I didn't learn anything from my own childhood because that kid was as depressed as I was growing up. All 'Malfoys don't yell, Malfoys have decorum'. I didn't even have a job. And before you ask, why the fuck do you think, Potter?"
Draco must have been ill, talking about himself to Potter of all people. Hexed, maybe, or cursed, to be friendly towards the twat against his will.
"And you don't want that?" Potter asked, after a minute.
Draco shook his head. "The marriage contract was supposed to be voided after I spoke to mother about it. Obviously didn't happen with the whole, y'know, war thing that happened. I've written to her since but I've yet to get a reply. I suppose since it's still 'on', I'll still marry her one day."
"Don't you find it a bit scary?"
"What, marrying Greengrass? There's worse options, I suppose, but not my area of expertise."
Potter ignored the comment. "No, seeing how shit our futures are. I thought," he shook his head with a sigh. "I thought now that everything's stopped we could be happy."
Draco thought about it for a minute, and sod Merlin's balls but the bloke was right. It was scary, and Draco had bloody hoped things after the war would be better too, but apparently not.
"Still, Slughorn did say it was only one possible future," Draco offered. "At least we know we can change it. Who knows, maybe if we took it again in a couple months things might be completely different." Harry nodded, but didn't seem too convinced. "Say, you start by dropping Wea- Ginevra, and I start by making mother drop that bloody marriage deal."
Harry chuckled a little, and smiled in appreciation of Draco at least making an effort with his friend's name. "Don't be too hard on Narcissa about it, though," he quirked his eyebrows. "She doesn't need her poor heart breaking."