Chapter Text
I
“You've got my body, flesh, and bone
The sky above, the earth below
Nothing to say and nowhere to go
A taste of the divine”
- The Summoning - Sleep Token
“I know it's wrong -
God, it's all kinds of wrong -
but I just want to lie down with you
and wake up with you, just once,
just once ever in my life.”
- Cassandra Clare, City of Glass
The worst part of it was the cold. The wind outside the Malfoy Manor was howling wildly, freezing and ruthless, painfully slicing across Draco Malfoy’s cheeks until they stung. His lips were already a pale shade of blue, his teeth chattering loud enough to echo through the corridor despite the rattling of the windows. Although he had a pair of gloves on his hands, and a fur coat draped around his slender shoulders, none of it mattered, and Draco was shivering. The cold seeped into his bones, merciless, numbing everything it touched. He wouldn’t die from it, not tonight, Merlin forbid he died for being frozen, but it certainly felt close enough.
Once, Malfoy Manor had been the epitome of a pureblood home. Tall black iron gates, wide gleaming windows, a garden of perfectly trimmed roses. Inside, every wall was tastefully painted in muted tones, elegant dark reds, classic beiges. The hearth was always lit, humming softly with magic, and every corner of the house was warm and bright. Once, Draco’s home had been imposing, grand, and alive. Now, it was a land of ghosts, no souls wandering its halls. None but Draco Malfoy, and the demons that followed him.
The fallout of the war had hit him hard enough that he was still scrambling to stand back up. He’d avoided Azkaban only because Potter had testified in his favor, but everything else had been stripped away. The Malfoy fortune was seized and used to pay reparations to war survivors. Lucius Malfoy, a well-known supporter of He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, received the Kiss the moment his trial ended. And despite all his faults and shortcomings, Narcissa followed her husband soon after, dying slowly of a broken heart, in house arrest, her wand snapped. Neither of them spared him a thought in the end. After everything, Draco Malfoy was penniless, alone, and fucking cold.
Draco pushed the door open with numb fingers, stepping into the manor’s dim entrance hall. The chandelier overhead flickered weakly. The cold followed him inside like an unwelcome guest, curling around his ankles. He shrugged off his coat, letting it drop onto the nearest chair. It felt pointless to hang it properly, since there was no one left to scold him for it, no elf to tidy up after his carelessness.
“Home sweet home.” Draco muttered bitterly, voice hoarse and throat slightly sore after standing in the weather for too long. He lifted his wand, casting a quick warming charm on himself. The heat bloomed over his skin, but it did little to the constant aches from the cold in his bones.
Then, he made his way to the library, the one room most searched on by the Ministry’s confiscations. Shelves of books towered around him in familiar rows, a reminder of the life he could have had if everything hadn’t gone to hell, but a lot of volumes were missing. Draco mourned the books lost, because it meant that magic was lost too, somehow, and summoned once again a warm cup of tea with a flick of his wand, the steam rising into the cold air. He settled into one of the leather armchairs and opened a text on medimagical practices. In another world, he might have been a healer, might have had a future worth building.
Foolish, his mind hissed.
Who would let Draco Malfoy heal them with these hands? Hands that touched evil, whose bearer carried the mark of the darkest wizard who ever lived?
Draco ran a hand through his hair, pushing away the intrusive thoughts. No sense to be mourning something that wasn’t meant to be. As he slid the book he took before back into place, something clattered behind the shelf, a faint metallic sound.
Draco froze.
Slowly, he reached behind the stack of books, his fingers brushing through cobwebs and dirty wood until they touched cold metal. Smooth. Familiar. When he pulled it free, his breath caught in his throat.
A time-turner. But not a simple one. The rings were thicker, made of gold that shimmered with old magic. Runes curled across its frame like living ink. And on the central band, engraved in raised letters, were the words: Make a wish.
Draco stared at the inscription, lips parting in disbelief. Make a wish. As if life had ever granted him the luxury of wanting anything.
He turned the object over in his hands, feeling the delicate weight of it. The gold was warm, humming with old magic, ancient, far stronger than any Ministry-approved junk. This wasn’t the sort of time-turner that let someone redo homework or be in two places at the same time. This was something else entirely. Something dangerous. And Merlin help him, Draco was tempted.
A quiet laugh bubbled out of him, humorless.
“What would I even wish for?” he murmured to the empty room. He leaned back in the chair, running his thumb along the engraved words.
His first instinct was foolishly simple, to have his family again, all of them, whole and alive. But that fantasy faded as quickly as it came. Love wouldn’t fix Lucius Malfoy. Magic wouldn’t heal what had been carved into Narcisa Black long before the war. Bringing them back would only bring back the same misery, the same chains.
He wanted something real. Something possible.
Draco closed his eyes, and the thought came to him like a whisper: I wish I could fix things from the start.
He exhaled slowly, head tipping against the back of the chair. It was ridiculous. He was exhausted, hadn’t slept properly in days. This was the sort of idea that came when someone was too tired to think straight. Still… The wish slipped from his lips in a quiet breath, unsteady.
“I want a chance to set things right. From the beginning.”
Nothing happened at first. Then…
The time-turner flickered faintly in his hands, glowing as if approving the sincerity of his words, its rings moving slowly. Draco barely had a moment to register the warmth spreading up his arms before exhaustion crashed into him like a physical blow. His vision blurred. The library spun. The world itself seemed to fold in on him. Draco tried to reach out uselessly for balance, yelping when his legs failed him. The last thing he felt was the carpet against his cheek as he collapsed, consciousness slipping away.
~
When Draco woke again, his first thought was that the floor had become far too soft, and smelt faintly like soap. His second thought was that the light was far too bright.
His third was the voice.
“Glad to see you’re finally awake.”
Draco’s blood froze. He knew that voice somehow, and he shivered despite the heavy blanket against his legs. Smooth, charming, threaded with something sharp beneath the surface. A voice that had haunted Hogwarts for decades, and Draco’s nightmares for years after. He forced his eyes open.
Standing beside the bed was a boy of sixteen or seventeen. Dark hair in perfect curls. Eyes sharp, intelligent, far too curious, a stunning shade of chocolate. Looking proper, green tie well placed, something about his presence that was disarmingly normal yet deeply wrong.
Tom Marvolo Riddle. A name he only knew after the war, a far shot from the Dark Lord, something so mundane it didn’t fit. Young. Alive. Human. Nothing like the pictures his father was so proud of. And looking at Draco as if he were a puzzle for him to solve.
Draco’s breath hitched, nausea curling in his stomach. He felt like retching.
Oh, Merlin. Oh, no.
The time-turner had worked. And it had sent him straight into the arms of the boy who would become Voldemort.