Chapter Text
Chapter 1
July 1995
Somewhere Definitely Not England
It had been a bad day.
Not unlike the other days that had come before, ever since Draco had stepped out of King’s Cross station with his mother — his mother who Draco was completely reformulating his perception of. Gone was the genteel noblewoman who enjoyed the soft arts and doted on him lovingly.
Now, Draco had found that his sweet, darling mother was actually a terrifyingly brilliant liar and a renegade.
Not to mention a sneaky sneak who snuck about, all the while looking appallingly at ease wearing trousers of all things, for Merlin’s sa—
“What did I tell you about your thoughts, my sweet son?”
If I can hear your thoughts, then that means any Legilimens with some talent can as well.
Draco glared at her calm face and promptly exploded. “Well, if you could stop eavesdropping for one second, then maybe you won’t hear them!”
“I don’t have to, darling. They’re written all over your face.” Mother sighed as she ran her eyes over him, from the wet tips of his seaweed-tangled hair to his ruined boots. “Why do this, Draco? Did you really think you could swim your way back to land?”
Draco felt himself flush despite the bitter wind.
Well sure it seemed stupid now that they’d fished his sorry arse half-alive and half-frozen ten feet from the ship like a blond mackerel in distress, but Draco had built a tiny boat all by himself damn it. It wasn’t entirely his fault he hadn’t been able to test it on actual ocean water and it had sunk like a stone. Besides, Draco had been saved by a sympathetic merman once, so who could say that he wouldn’t get lucky again?
Also, he was fifteen. It was the summer before his 5th year. He’d been looking forward to reading to his peacocks, to seeing his friends, to snatching Harry from his dreadful aunt’s place and taking him to Grimmauld where they would hang out with Sirius and Remus when his parents weren’t paying attention.
It was never supposed to be like this —oceans away from home, in a ship that Draco could swear was growing smaller by the day, his hands raw from tying knots because he’ll be damned if his wimpy, pirate wannabe of a roommate called his work ‘shoddy’ or ‘like it was done with the two left feet of a centaur’. Damn him and damn this ship and all the crew in it, but most especially their stupid Cap—
“Darling, I know you understand why we have to do this. Despite everything that you’ve done to show otherwise.”
Draco could only stare at the floor, a knot lodged in his throat at the desperate plea in his mother’s voice. She walked closer until her slender arms were wrapped around him.
“I never wished for you to be unhappy. All I’ve ever wanted was to keep you safe,” she said softly. Draco had grown enough the past two months that he could see over the top of her head now, but his long-awaited growth spurt barely cheered him up. It just made him see the stars better, leading him to the last port they'd stopped at if all his calculations had been right. And they were, Draco had no doubt. Still, he felt all the fight in him leave his exhausted body.
“Your father has made his choice, Draco,” she’d told him after she’d apparated them to a bustling loading dock from the train station and Draco had asked her nicely if she’d perhaps forgotten the directions to the mansion. She’d placed a hand on his face, the determined look in her eyes making him shiver. “I’ve already lost one family to the Dark Lord. I told myself I wouldn’t let it happen again. He will want you, my love, but I will never let him have you.”
There had been no doubt as to who He was. Not for the first time, Draco felt an overwhelming fear at the mention of You-Know-Who. If his mother was afraid, if even bloody Dumbledore was in knots over him, then who was Draco to think he could ever stand up to that kind of power? His thoughts traveled to Harry briefly, but Draco couldn’t look away from his mother’s beloved face.
Harry has Dumbledore, something inside Draco whispered. He has the Weasleys, and Remus, and Sirius, and Hermione, and…and maybe even Marcus Flint if all that growling could be considered a form of affection. But Draco’s mother didn’t have anyone. No family. No husband. Just him…just Draco.
Draco had vowed then that he wouldn’t let that evil wizard have her either.
“I’m sorry,” he said, voice rough with emotion. “I just…if I could just send a letter.”
His mother clutched him closer. “You know we can’t risk it, my love. Your father is still searching for us, as is his master.”
Draco knew this, he did. But still.
Today is July 31 st , he wanted to say.
In the end, he decided not to. It wouldn’t have mattered. Instead, Draco buried his face in his mother’s hair.
---
August 1995
Somewhere Definitely Not England
That morning, Draco woke up sick as a crup. He supposed diving headfirst into the ocean with nothing but hope and a can-do attitude had the tendency to do that to a person. Regardless, it was exactly the wake-up call Draco needed. From here on out, there would be no more escape attempts, however ingenious, and no more secretly bribing the crew with money he didn’t have to send letters to his friends.
More importantly, there would be no more using the necklace to let Hermione know that Draco was still alive somewhere. That he was thinking of her.
Draco plucked the glowing thing from underneath his pillow. It had never really stopped glowing since he left England, the colors ranging from orange ( Come here now! ) to red ( I swear to Merlin I’m going to kill you if you don’t respond, Draco Malfoy) to a deep blue—which Draco preferred not to dwell on cause it could only mean that Hermione was sad and it was his fault and there was nothing he could really do about it.
Draco was about to throw the necklace (hopefully through the window and into the depths of the ocean) when a boyish face, clouded by dark reddish curls popped up from above him. As if the indignities were not enough, not only did Draco have to live on a 15th-century ship like a common brigand, but he also had to co-exist with the most annoying bunkmate to ever live.
“Are you still obsessing over that thing?” The little twit— Samuel —sounded so aggrieved, you’d think he’d been the one shanghaied across the world, never to see his friends again. “Oh man, does this mean you’re plotting to escape again ?”
“Well, there wouldn’t be a need to escape again, would there, if someone had been a proper lookout the first three or four times?” Draco burst out.
“But Captain asked me where you were!”
“You couldn’t tell him I was in the toilet?” Draco demanded. “You absolutely had to tell him I’d jumped in the sea?”
“Yes!” Samuel huffed. “He’s my captain.”
“So, what? He asks you anything, tells you anything, you’d do it?”
“Yes!”
“What if he tells you to walk the plank?”
“I will!”
“What if he asks you to dance naked?”
“Why would he—”
“Or skin a cat?”
“Okay that’s not—”
“Then wear the cat while dancing naked under the full m—”
“Now you’re just being ridiculous!”
“And you’re a liar,” Draco spat out. “And a traitor too.”
Samuel flushed a terrible shade, his face twisting in a way that made Draco uncomfortable. Had Draco gone too far? So far, the boy had been his only friend. Possibly companion. Or associate. A reluctant acquaintance of a sort.
Samuel let loose a slow breath before planting himself on the floor so he could face Draco eye to eye. “You’re blaming the wrong person. I wasn’t the one who woke up the whole ship, you know.”
Draco’s gaze snapped to Little Draco who’d been suspiciously quiet the entire morning now that he’d thought about it. The little bugger avoided his eyes and ducked under the bed.
“Why you—” Before Draco could unleash a stream of terror from his lips, his body once again betrayed him by exploding into a sneezing fit.
“Ahuh, see you’re in no shape to be fighting anyone, Draco.” Samuel had the temerity to usher him to bed, clucking all the way like a scrawny boy version of Pomfrey. “Better save all that energy for your next escape.”
“There’s not going to be—” Sneeze. “—a next time.”
Samuel’s ministering hands paused from fluffing his pillows. “What?”
“I’m giving up,” Draco said quietly. “No more escapes. I won’t try to contact my friends anymore either so you can stop hiding your owl. I know she’s in the kitchen probably violating a million health codes in the process. We’re all getting owl rabies thanks to you.”
Samuel spluttered. “There’s no such thi—”
“Anyway,” Draco interrupted loudly. “It’s probably better that they think I’ve disappeared, or dead, or whatever. There’s nothing I can do except stay here. Become stronger. Protect my mother. Usurp your incompetent captain. Be Pirate King. In that order.”
Samuel looked as if he was ready to attack him for that last comment, hopeless suck-up that he was, but instead he shook his head and gave Draco an uncharacteristically solemn look. “If you really think that, then you should probably read this.” He pulled out a rolled-up newspaper from inside his jacket and handed it to him. “It came this morning. They said you might not be ready, but I think you should know.”
Draco didn’t know what the hell he was on about. First of all, who was they ? And second, who did they think they were implying Draco couldn’t handle a stupid newspaper, but then his eyes skimmed the front page of The Daily Prophet and all the words died in his throat .
Draco was looking at his face, or at least his face from two years ago at the first Christmas Ball he’d attended at the manor after losing his memory. They’d had their family portrait taken at the bottom of the stairs just before the party started. His father appeared stoic and slightly bored as was his usual, while his mother had looked radiant in her icy blue dress—also her usual. And then there was Draco, trying to and failing to hide an excited grin. He’d been so eager to prove himself to his father back then. That no matter his accident and loss of memory, Draco was still worthy to be called his son.
Draco read the words above the picture over and over, his mind failing to understand.
Missing Malfoy Wife and Heir Declared Dead (Details on page 3)
---
August 1995
Main Deck – Somewhere Definitely Not England
“I’m dead,” Draco announced to no one in particular.
“Stop saying that.” Samuel stopped his energetic mopping to glare at him. “You’re not actually dead so could you please clean faster so we can make it to lunch?”
Draco ignored him in favor of resting his arms on the railing to gaze dramatically at the horizon. Boating accident, the news article had said, which would’ve been funny in an ironic way if only it wasn’t Draco’s father who said it, and it wasn’t Draco’s father who was holding a farce of a funeral service for Draco and his mother.
So this was it then. They both were dead to him and to anyone else in the wizarding world. Draco clenched his fist, a sick twisted rage climbing up his chest. How could he —it’s only been two months—how could he just give up? How could he say they were dead? As if Draco and his mother were nothing ?
“Oi, quit your staring and start swabbing.”
Draco blinked, grabbing the dirty towel Samuel had flung at his face. He hadn’t even noticed Luka and Paulo training on the deck below them, a true testament to Draco’s current unstable state of mind. It usually cheered him up to see them working out, liars though they were who tricked Draco into thinking they were models when they were really pirates who occasionally modeled.
At least they’d had the decency to be apologetic about it.
“Sorry, Little Dragon,” Luka had said after a minute of Draco pointing at them accusingly, utterly speechless at the sight of them swinging down from the top mast to land in front of him, a stunning pair of limber demigods. “It is a kind of vow of secrecy that we made with our lives, you understand?”
Well.
Paulo continued, “Should we divulge our real identity without our captain’s approval, we would die. Instantly. Our bones pulverized, our blood boiling and streaming out our orifices, our soul delivered to Hades hims—”
“I think I get the picture.” Draco coughed and slid a freaked out glance to his mother next to him as if to say, Where the fuck did you just take us, lady?
Back then, Draco had no idea exactly what he was in for.
“Thinking of taking another dip?”
Draco spun so fast, he almost did take another dip.
“Bet you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
The Captain’s face remained impassive, what Draco could see of it anyway since the right half of it was covered by a black mask, possibly a desperate bid to become Phantom of the Opera of the Seas.
“Personally, I don’t care what you do, brat,” he said coldly. “But you should have some care for your mother.”
Blood rushed to Draco’s head. “Some nerve you have talking about her, when you’ve been gone for more than a decade! Your brother—” Draco stopped and turned away, but he could feel his stupid cousin’s searing eyes on him anyway.
“What about him?”
Draco refused to answer. Mother had said he was family, that Reggie was fiercely loyal and kind. He’d had to stay away for his safety. She’d even helped him escape, introducing him to her friends, Luka and Paulo who’d given him a second life at sea. Draco didn’t care about any of that, really. Father had been given a second life too and look what he’d done with it. He’d gone right back to You-Know-Who's arms.
What if Regulus could read Draco’s mind? He couldn’t think about Grimmy. He needed to think about other things—puppies, NO , cats, mice. Scabbers. Pettigrew. Oh fuck’s sake—
“Is that the lunch bell?” Samuel grabbed Draco’s arm tightly. “Er, we’ll just be going now.”
“Stop.”
Draco could swear Samuel stopped breathing entirely, mindless follower that he was, but Draco refused to be cowed and glared right back at his stupid cousin’s stupid half-face.
“Not until you’ve cleaned the decks.” A faint smirk, discomfitingly familiar to Draco, colored his cousin's usually bland expression. “All of them.”
Draco could only fume as he watched Regulus walk away. “You and your stupid ship deserve to sink in the ocean,” he said to his back.
---
It seemed widely unfair that the one wish Draco had made unthinkingly would be the only one to come true.
“Sink in the ocean, you said!” Samuel cried over the sound of cannons and wizardfire. “Couldn’t have told him off without endangering the rest of us, could you?”
To be fair, Draco had no idea his cousin was this incompetent. He was supposed to be a bloody amazing pirate captain, the way everyone waxed poetic about him. Useless con artists, these pirates.
“Ask yourself, dear Samuel. Is now really the time to be pointing fingers?” Draco asked, just as another blast rocked their appallingly flimsy ship. Draco swallowed his fear and peeked over the edge of the crow’s nest. They’d been scrubbing the inside when the first shot rang out and had stayed there since, but who knew how long their luck would hold out?
Knowing Draco, it wouldn’t be for very long. It figured his cause of death would be cleaning. If he survived, he was never swabbing a single deck again.
“I thought you said this was the best crew in all the seas!”
“They are!” Samuel insisted, despite evidence of the contrary. “It’s just–there’s so many of them!”
Which was true, the rival crew had streamed forth into their ship, like an angry mob of rope-swinging and axe-waving leather Inferi. They looked it too. Draco could tell that hygiene was not that ship’s particular priority.
Another blast, too close to where they were, and suddenly Draco saw a flash of blond hair fall near the stern. “Mother!”
He doubted she could hear him. She was struggling to get on her feet, unable to see the pirate coming behind her.
“We have to do something!” Draco clutched Samuel. “Bloody shoot him or something!”
“What-What do you mean?”
“With your wand, idiot!” Draco had no time for this. He grabbed the wand he'd seen poking out of Samuel's jacket and was about to wield it, Ministry detectors be damned, when he stopped, awestruck at the scene that unfolded.
The pirate with the shiny, bald head had stretched out his wand at Draco's mother when Regulus swung from a rope and descended on the poor man like dark vengeance. It was quick. Regulus disarmed the other man with his elbow and in two swift moves Draco could barely catch, kicked him overboard. Then he pulled Draco's mother to his side and took on another four.
“See?” Samuel nudged him, positively foaming at the mouth with awe. “Told you he was the best.”
“And I also told you we should bloody do something! We can help them from up here.” Draco handed him his wand. “Well?” he prompted when Samuel only stared at the thing as if it would bite off his face.
“I-well, see, Draco, I'm not,” Samuel swallowed hard, his face looking horrifyingly close to tears. “I'm not very good at magic.”
“Oh for Merlin's–” Draco held back a scathing put down. The boy looked down enough already. “But if the Ministry comes for me, it'll be on your head.”
Not that it would matter should Draco sink with the damn ship before the night was over.
“Why would they?” Samuel asked, genuinely puzzled. “They think you're dead, don't they? Your father would have registered your death and they would stop tracking you.”
Draco stared at him. “How the fuck do you know that?”
Samuel flushed. “The, um, captain. He's dead too on the registry so he can–”
“Talk's over!” Draco didn't need to hear more and turned to the scene below, his wand arm fairly tingling. God but it had been so long. He only wished he hadn't left his own wand in his trunk, but Samuel's would have to do.
He started off with some tripping jinxes, sprinkled with Incarcerous before gradually moving to his specialty, the Slug Charm. There was quite a bit of smoke, but Draco did not fail to see the look of mild disgust Regulus shot him as the vomit splashed on his boots.
Heh.
It took several more hours or maybe twenty minutes, Draco had no clue to be honest, but eventually the fighting ended. Draco tried not to look at the limp bodies strewn across the ship and instead focused on the ones that were alive. They hadn't lost any of their crew, thank Merlin. As for the other pirates, Draco had seen them fire to maim, to kill each time.
A part of him understood they'd only done what was necessary. However, another part of him never wanted to hold a wand again.
And also maybe to vomit.
“Oh, Draco.”
Draco fell apart in his mother's arms. It was hugely embarrassing, made worse by the fact that everyone was there. Regulus was as well, although he was busy kicking some guy in the face to notice.
“You bastard!” Another kick. “Humans?? You're keeping humans in cages, you sick fuck? We have a code!”
The other guy's lips twisted into a bloody grin. “Not humans. Half-breeds. ” His face grew serious. “And I don't follow your code, pirate.”
Before Regulus could land another kick, the guy's eyes rolled to the back of his head and he fell. Lifeless. Dead.
Unlike a normal human, Regulus was completely unfazed, if a bit more clenched than before. He stepped closer and nudged his foot against the dead man's left arm.
“Another one?” His first mate, Jin, asked him.
Regulus nodded stiffly. “Take him away.”
Draco couldn't help but step closer. Why the left arm? It couldn't be…
And it wasn't. Not the Dark Mark at least, but something else entirely. Cold fear had Draco rooted to the floor, unable to move. Unable to look away from the dead man's arm. It wasn't ink, but scarred skin, twisted and torn to create a pair of deathless red eyes.
—
August 1995
Captain's Office - Somewhere Definitely Not England
Draco hadn't been back in the Captain's Office since his first day. His mother had introduced them and it was Dislike at First Sight.
“Thank you, Reggie,” his mother had said tearily. “I didn't know who else to turn to.I wasn't sure you'd come.”
“I owe you a Life Debt, Narcissa. Of course I’d come.”
Draco bristled at that. Bastard only helped them because of a bloody Life Debt, not even because they were family or anything.
“I'm not calling you cousin,” Draco told him promptly.
The git spared him a look that could only be described as unimpressed.
This time around, his annoying cousin was still giving him the same look.
Draco persevered. “I mean it, Regulus. I want you to train me.”
It took another minute of Draco absolutely not breaking their stare-off for Regulus to respond. “Why?”
Draco almost growled with frustration. What could he say?
Because he was only the coolest and best fighter Draco had ever seen in his life?
Because Mother could have died tonight if it wasn't for Regulus?
Because those eyes had scared Draco more than You-Know-Who?
Or because he'd seen the prisoners those pirates had kept before they'd set them free? Half-sirens, one even younger than Draco, muzzled and in chains, and the sight had struck Draco in a deep and visceral way.
He had to do something. He'd made a difference tonight, but Draco couldn't shake the feeling that this was only the beginning.
“I…I need to be stronger.”
As far as convincing arguments went, this wasn't Draco's best, but Regulus' next words told Draco that perhaps his cousin was one of those Legilimens with some talent (LWST?) his mother was talking about and he'd made sense of Draco's chaotic thoughts for him.
“All right, brat.” Regulus gave him an appraising once-over. “But you'll have to start calling me Captain.”
Draco opened his mouth.
“And I'll know if you mean it.”
Fuck.