Chapter Text
Draco
The blaze was all-consuming. Flames clawed up the side of the wizarding home in Upper Flagley, vomiting sparks into the dark sky. Smoke billowed unnaturally, too dense, too fast, as if the fire was thriving from within on a neverending accelerant. They had maybe minutes before the entire building came down.
Potter appeared beside him with a crack, his wand already up. “Jesus, fuck!” he exclaimed, squinting at the blaze and holding an arm up to shield his face.
Every Auror in their unit was already tackling the flames from the ground, along with four other Aurors, throwing out concealment wards and water charms. They were doing everything they were trained to do, trying their utmost to extinguish, to suffocate, to tame. But it was barely making any difference.
Draco swallowed a lump in his throat. He hadn’t seen fire behave so hungrily, so deliberate in years. Not since the war, when Goyle, terrified and stupid, had let fiendfyre devour the Room of Requirement with a wand he had no business wielding. He could still recall stumbling through black smoke and blistering heat, certain he would die—
Not again. Not tonight.
He and Potter sprung into action. They didn’t need to discuss anything; after ten years as Auror partners, they knew each other’s rhythms like muscle memory. Two high-ranking Aurors, back-to-back against the world, covering the angles the other couldn’t see. They came up alongside Robertson, their squad leader, who was battling with a warding spell. He and Potter cast the same one, pushing the flames back a touch, but it wouldn’t hold forever.
“What of the residents?!” Draco asked his unit captain. His voice was steady, but something in his chest tightened at the thought of anyone being trapped in there.
“Reeves and Lovell were first on scene,” Robertson yelled above the fire’s roar. “They found two adults, already confirmed dead on site. Detection spells came back clean for the building. All we can do for now is contain it so that it doesn’t spread.”
That was a relief, at least. But the fire still had the potential to spread to other homes, to harm more people if the wards didn’t hold. If it was fiendfyre, like Draco suspected, the wards wouldn’t hold indefinitely, and the fire would destroy everything in its path unless they could get it under control. Draco countered a sudden gout of flame with a sweep of his wand. The fire bucked like a living beast, recoiling and then biting forward, like an attacking serpent.
Definitely fiendfyre. And like all cursed flames, it was resisting suppression. A shiver pricked the back of his neck despite the heat.
Whoever started the fire, didn’t intend on letting anyone escape it.
Potter shot him a grim look from his left flank, soot already streaking his face. “We’ve got to stop it.”
“Obviously,” Draco said, and rolled his eyes purely out of habit. “We just need a better angle.”
Another eruption licked across the top floors. The wards the others had placed around the building were crackling, failing. They didn’t have time to chip away from ground level, it was attacking too violently for them to get close enough.
“We’ll never get control from down here,” Draco said to the squad leader. He flicked his wand, and his broom sprang from his pocket, expanding to full size in his hand. “We need to hit the flames higher up.”
“Aye, good call, Malfoy. Potter, Forbes—brooms, now!”
Despite it being his own idea, a cold wave slid through Draco’s chest. The last time he’d been airborne in a fire like this, he’d lost a friend… and nearly his own life. He could still feel the collapsing heat of the Room of Requirement, still tasting smoke as thick as grief. And layered over it all: the moment he’d thought Potter would leave him. Potter should have left him.
But he hadn’t. Potter and his friends had doubled back for Draco and Blaise when any sane person would have flown for safety.
And Draco, for better or worse, had never forgotten it.
A shadow moved at his side. Potter.
“You’ve got this,” he said. Not a question, but a quiet, anchoring fact. A reminder of who Draco was now, and who Potter had always been. An encouraging hero.
Draco met his eyes and, for a heartbeat, saw both the man beside him and the boy who once dragged him out of hell. The same boy, the same man, rather, that he’d requested as a partner after the Academy, because they both knew the truth: they would protect each other without hesitation. Two sides of the same coin, split by a war but aligned by purpose.
“Yeah,” Draco said, mounting his broom. “I’ve got it.”
Potter nodded once, sharp and sure, before mounting his own broom. Robertson and Forbes were already several feet off the air.
“On my mark—”
But Draco was already kicking off, cutting into the smoke-thick sky. Heat clawed at his eyes; embers kissed his robes as he rose toward the shattered windows. The flames surged, as if recognising him.
Potter pulled up beside him, coughing hard. “What are you thinking?” he asked. “Water?”
Draco steeled his breathing. He’d learned to fight fire out of necessity. He had learned to bend it, push it, cage it, defeat it. After losing Goyle, he’d sworn never to be that helpless inside a burning room again. Still, his hatred for fire remained. He despised how sentient it could be, so dangerously enticing and unpredictable.
“Bubbleheads!” Draco commanded, checking his team to be sure they’d followed orders before drawing back, prepared to pull the oxygen from within to suffocate the blaze. One of Auntie Bella’s more creative choking spells.
Over the roaring flames, Draco suddenly picked up on another sound, one that made his blood run cold. For a moment, he thought he was trapped inside another nightmare, where screams echoed through the Manor’s drawing room, slicing into his soul.
He wasn’t dreaming, yet his heart felt drawn to the fire like a moth to a flame.
Because inside, someone was screaming.
But not just someone.
A child.
Draco’s heart slammed against his ribs.
There was a child trapped inside the fire.
Without hesitation, without a single breath, Draco threw up Bubblehead Charm, angled his broom hard and hurled himself through the shattered window, completely ignoring Potter’s sharp, furious shout of protest from behind him.
Thank Merlin for dragonhide uniforms. He thought, throwing out a wandless gust of wind to get him through the small entry point.
The heat blasted him like a tidal wave. For good measure, he cast a fire-repelling charm over himself, though smoke still curled around him, thick and vicious. He inhaled tightly, refusing to allow his past dealings with fiendfyre to deter him. There was a child’s life at stake.
With a Bubblehead Charm holding strong, he forced a path through the flames with a cutting gust charm. The entire house was engulfed, the bedroom he stood in was already half-collapsed, burning in violent patches. He pushed through to the corridor, where the screaming was getting louder.
“Hello?” he called, voice raw. “Keep calling out so I can find you!”
The crying continued on. Draco followed it through the thickening smoke, kicking aside burning debris and crouching to avoid the flames engulfing the ceiling. The heat of the fire pressed at his front like a living thing, trying to herd him away. But he pushed harder, determined to rescue the child ahead.
“I’m coming! I’m here to help you! Where are you?”
There was no answer, and for a moment, Draco wondered if perhaps it had been his imagination playing tricks on him. Or some sort of boggart luring him into the fire.
But then he heard another whimper. Draco spun towards the sound, finding a tiny girl holding her hand over her mouth. Her long, ink-dark hair almost concealed her completely. She was barely visible even with bright flames licking up the walls. Had it not been for those startling, silvery eyes, he might have missed her entirely. The young thing was curled beneath a toppled bookcase, coughing, trembling, trying to make herself impossibly small.
Her gaze was locked on him, wide enough that he could see the full circle of each iris. Terror flooded her expression, so stark and shimmering, and so much like his own reflection from years ago. She flinched when he stepped closer, scrambling back until her shoulders hit splintered wood.
“It’s okay,” he said softly, raising both hands. “I’m not here to hurt you.”
From the cry she let out as she clutched the bookcase, it was clear she didn’t believe him. Her coughs came in sharp, shaking bursts, soot and smoke covering her tiny nose. Her eyes so bright they almost glowed, following his every movement like a cornered mooncalf.
He reached slowly towards his coat pocket. She tensed as though preparing to bolt.
“Easy…” he murmured, and drew out the Auror badge. He held it where she could see it clearly. “My name is Draco. I’m an Auror, see? This badge means that I help people.”
For a heartbeat, she stared at the badge, frozen.
Then she crawled out from her hiding spot and launched herself at him.
Her small arms locked around his neck, clutching with desperate, impressive force. He staggered but caught her, holding her tight.
“That’s it. I’ve got you,” he murmured, wrapping an arm firmly around her small body. He drew his wand. “Protego Totalum.”
A shimmering shield enveloped her. The heat around them dulled. The child buried her face in his robes, trembling, despite the heat emanating off her. She was coughing against his neck, digging her small hands into his shoulders. He pressed his wand to the girl’s face, encasing her head in the same bubble charm helping him to breathe. Against his body, he felt her take a deep breath, and something in his own chest eased at the sound. She would still need to be taken to St Mungo’s, there was no telling how much smoke she’d already inhaled, or what other injuries she’d sustained. But for now, she was alright.
Potter’s voice echoed from somewhere deeper in the wreckage, furious and frightened in equal measure. The damned fool had followed him in.
“Malfoy! Malfoy! Draco! Answer me!”
“I’m unharmed!” Draco shouted back. “Retreat, Potter, the structure is compromised!”
The last thing he needed was Potter playing the hero again by rescuing him into another fire.
The flames recoiled from him suddenly, then surged forward again, as if the fire itself objected to losing them both. Draco held the girl tight, feeling her shaking against him as she cried out.
“Draco!” she blubbered. “Da fire got so big!”
“I know,” he said, pressing his hand against her head, holding him close to her. “I won’t let it get you, sweetheart, I promise!”
He felt her little hands cling to his neck, the sound of her choked sobs drowned out by the roaring flames. Below him, the floor groaned. He sensed the wood warping, beams cracking like bones under the strain.
“Malfoy!” Potter’s voice tore through the smoke. “Get out now, the roof is about to give out!”
Potter was right. The boards beneath his boots shifted dangerously, the whole level tilting toward collapse. Draco darted a glance toward the window he’d climbed through. The space where his broom should’ve been was engulfed in flames. The thing had likely burned up wherever he’d dropped it. And Apparition was no use; he and the other Aurors had erected containment wards the moment they arrived, compressing the flames to protect the other homes, but blocking any sort of magical exit.
They were boxed in.
There was only one thing for it.
Gently, he adjusted his hold on the girl, tucking her head firmly against his chest, angling his body to block her view of the collapsing home. He bent low, lowering his face to hers, brushing her soot-dusted hair aside so his voice would reach her clearly over the groaning beams and roaring flames.
“Hey,” he murmured, voice low and steady. “I need you to do something for me, all right? When I say so, take a deep breath and close your eyes. Think you can do that for me?”
He felt her tremble, a small, shuddering movement against his ribs, and then she nodded.
“Good girl,” he whispered, keeping her shielded, tightening his arms around her. “Hold on tight, I’m getting us out of here. Ready?”
With a sharp wave of his arm, he roared through the flames, “Procella!”
A burst of air cleared their path, and not a moment too soon. A beam crashed directly where he’d stood only a moment ago. With not a second to spare, he sprinted for the window, tucking the little girl tightly to his chest.
“Deep breath, sweetheart, now!”
Flames clawed at his heels as he threw himself through the charred pane, launching into the night like a quaffle hurled at impossible speed. For a split second they were falling, the concealment wards thrumming in the air like a physical barrier. But the moment he felt them both pass through the magic’s edge, Draco Apparated.
He staggered onto the cobbled street in a burst of cool night air, roughly fifty feet from the house.
“We’re safe now,” he promised her. “You’re safe.”
Behind them, an earth-shattering roar split the night. The entire three-storey building caved inward, its burning skeleton collapsing into a crashing heap. Smoke and embers shot upward in a violent fountain, scattering like a thousand tiny phoenixes rising from the ashes.
They had made it out by seconds.
He cancelled the charms and cradled her close, determined to spare her from the sight, but she twisted towards the chaos, transfixed by the ruin of her home. The flames reflected in her mercurial eyes, each blink was slow, disbelieving. She wasn’t old enough to see Hogwarts in ruins, but Draco recalled looking at the castle in a similar way after the battle.
“It’ll be alright,” he murmured, smoothing a thumb across her back in slow, steady circles.
Above, he heard the rush of air as Potter swooped down on his broom. His Auror hit the ground running, barely letting the broom settle before striding toward him. Show off, always looking so debonair, even with concern marring his features. His chest was heaving, eyes scanning Draco head-to-toe for injuries. He tried not to take offence; it was simply Potter being Potter, always the worrisome one. Truthfully, though, had he watched his partner barrel headfirst into a burning building, he’d have done the exact same thing. Probably would have punched him for good measure for acting so recklessly.
No matter how capable the rest of the Auror Office was, none of them worked with the same relentless dedication—or with such irritatingly good instincts—as Harry sodding Potter. If anything ever happened to him, Draco wasn’t entirely sure how he’d replace his partner.
Not that he would ever admit that to him, of course.
“Merlin, Malfoy. You scared me half to death. This is why you rushed in there?” he questioned, mildly bewildered.
“I heard her crying,” Draco offered, eyeing the other Aurors still tackling the dissipating fire behind them. “Reeves and Lovell have some explaining to do.”
Boots scuffed against the cobbles as the rest of their unit approached at a jog. Draco stiffened on instinct. He felt the girl react to the noise, her body tensing.
Potter noticed, too. He cast Draco a quick, assessing glance, and then stepped neatly into the space between them and the other Aurors.
“Hold up,” Potter said sharply, raising a hand. “Give them some space.”
The approaching Aurors pulled back at once, forming a loose semicircle at a respectful distance. Draco exhaled, relieved in a way he hadn’t expected.
Almost without thinking, Potter reached out, perhaps out of some instinctive, fatherly reflex Draco couldn’t fault him for. Draco had limited experience with children, but if he had to guess her age, she was roughly the same size as Potter’s youngest. This one, however, seemed far better behaved than Lily, who had tried to bite Draco more than once whenever he visited Grimmauld Place.
Draco shifted the girl in his arms, prepared to hand her over, lifting her towards Potter. She would undoubtedly prefer him; most children did. He was irritatingly good with them. No surprise, really. With a wife determined to rival her own mother’s record for producing offspring, Potter had been forced to develop excellent parenting skills out of sheer necessity.
But the moment she realised she was being moved, the girl screamed, a raw, terrified sound. She burrowed into Draco’s robes, trying to wedge herself beneath the lapel, her little fists gripping the fabric with iron strength.
“No!” she shrieked. “Draco, no! Bad man! Bad man!”
Potter froze, then slowly withdrew his hands. His eyebrows rose over the rims of his glasses. Draco mirrored the expression.
“That’s just Harry, he’s my friend, he won’t hurt you.”
“No!” she cried, clinging tighter. “I want to stay wiv you!”
“You’ve made yourself a friend there, Malfoy.”
Draco adjusted his grip, feeling the girl shaking against him. “Seems like it. Hey,” he whispered low to the girl. “He won’t hurt you, he’s an Auror just like me. Potter, show her your badge.”
She peeked out from her impressive mane, eyeing Potter as he approached with his badge, holding it out to her just as Draco had.
“I’ve got a little girl at home, too. She’s about the same age as you.”
By all accounts, it should have worked. Potter had actual children, for Merlin’s sake, and a reputation for being good with them, but the squirming girl clearly disagreed, and wanted nothing to do with him.
She disappeared back behind her curtain of curls and clung to Draco’s robes like he was the last stable thing in a collapsing world. Which was ridiculous. Objectively, completely ridiculous. He could protect her, no question. But there were half a dozen Aurors better suited to handling children. Potter was practically built for it. Even Ainsworth, their miserable Head Auror, would’ve been a more natural choice. Draco, on the other hand… if someone compiled a list of Aurors most likely to be put in charge of a child, Draco would be at the bottom.
Well. Maybe he’d be second-to-last now, considering Reeves and Lovell had failed to detect a child in a burning building. Idiots. They’d officially fallen beneath him in the category of caring for children. In his eyes, at least.
“Well, this is a first,” Potter said, staring at the child with genuine bewilderment. “I don't think I've ever had a kid decide they hate me on sight before. Should I be offended?”
“You can't be everyone's cup of tea, Potter,” Draco drawled.
His partner looked personally affronted by the revelation.
Draco, meanwhile, found himself grappling with a far stranger problem.
For years after the war, people had looked at him and seen danger before they saw a person. He'd grown accustomed to the hesitation, the wariness, the instinctive flinch when they recognised his name, or his hair. Even after graduating top of his Auror class, competence only got one so far. Trust was an entirely different beast.
Yet this peculiar little creature had taken one look at Harry Potter—the universally adored saviour of the wizarding world—and decided he was suspicious.
Then she'd attached herself to Draco as though he were the safest person in the world.
It was, frankly, confounding.
Because Draco Malfoy was used to having precisely the opposite effect.
“What’s her name?” Potter asked.
“I tried asking,” Draco murmured, adjusting her as she burrowed against him, “but we were both a bit preoccupied playing hopscotch and the like.”
Potter’s glare said fuck off without a single word.
Draco flicked his eyes toward the ruined building, where Robertson was respectfully covering the bodies of the deceased with transfigured white sheets. Potter expelled a deep sigh, jaw tightening as his gaze returned to the girl in Draco’s arms. They didn’t need to speak of it; Draco could feel the weight of the truth settle between them. She had likely become an orphan tonight. Just as Potter had once been.
“Do you think you could tell us your name, little one?” Potter asked. His tone was gentle, but the urgency lurked beneath it. He held Draco’s gaze for a beat before his attention cut downward to Draco’s collarbone. Draco watched his face tighten as he pointed at him.
“Malfoy, your neck.”
Draco frowned and touched the spot Potter indicated. When he drew his hand back, his fingertips were stained red.
“What—”
That was when the girl stirred, coughing weakly against him. The wheezing sound that escaped her made his stomach twist. He shifted her carefully, sweeping strands of tangled hair from her face so she wouldn’t choke. But as his fingers moved to push the hair behind her ear, she flinched from him with a pitiful sob.
That’s when he saw it.
A deep, ugly gash slashed across her temple, half-hidden beneath the soot and her matted hair. When his fingers brushed it, they came away slick with fresh blood trailing down her cheek.
He swallowed hard and lifted his hand toward Potter in a silent, grim reveal.
His expression shifted instantly, and for a moment, the entire world funneled into the look they exchanged. Years of partnership distilled into a breath. And the anger felt over the fact a child had been harmed, and almost killed because one of their own had failed to detect her within.
The girl suddenly grabbed his blood hand with urgency. Her small fingers curled around his, and in a whisper thin as paper she asked, “Are you hurting?”
Draco shook his head, bewildered by such a thoughtful question from someone so small.
“No. It’s not me.” His voice softened. “You’ve got a cut on your head.”
She frowned, reaching her free hand toward her temple, but Draco caught her fingers gently before she could make contact.
“Don’t touch it, sweetheart,” he murmured. “We’ll need to get it cleaned up. Do you remember how you got it? Or when?”
She shook her head, eyes wide and scared.
“It’s alright, we’ll get it healed soon.”
Potter stepped closer, jaw set. “Get her to St Mungo’s, second floor,” he said firmly. “They’ll know what to do. She needs to see a specialist immediately. She could be concussed, Malfoy.”
Draco glanced down at her small, shaking form. She wasn’t letting go of him for anyone. He was, unfortunately, the logical choice.
“I’ll tell Ainsworth and Robertson where you’re going,” Potter continued, already turning toward the ruins. “And then I’m having words with Reeves and Lovell.” His voice dropped into a growl. “Big words.”
“I quite like the sound of suspension,” he snorted.
With one last shared look of reassurance, Potter stalked away, heading straight toward where Dipshit One and Dipshit Two were still pathetically dousing smouldering debris.
The girl peered up at him with her molten eyes, inquisitive and perhaps a little uncertain.
“We’re going to St Mungo’s now,” he told her, keeping his voice soft. “Do you know what that is?”
She shook her head, but there was no fear in it. If anything, she simply looked tired. And impossibly brave.
“It’s a magical hospital,” he explained. “They’ll help you to feel better there.”
Draco tightened his hold on the girl and prepared to Apparate. She followed suit, tightening her little fingers into his robes, Draco could tell she was silently asking if he would be staying with her.
“Yes, I’m going to take you there, and I’ll stay with you, alright?”
She studied him for a moment, as though weighing every word. Then she gave a small, determined nod.
Taking a deep breath, she proudly held his gaze, as if to say, look, I can do it.
A smile tugged at Draco's mouth.
“That's it,” he murmured. “Well done.”
Then she closed her eyes and curled into him, exactly as he'd shown her before.
Smart girl.
He couldn’t help the small, proud smile that lifted his cheeks. Holding her firmly, protectively against him, he Apparated them away.