CiCi Arts
Resident Edgelord
Draco Malfoy returns to Hogwarts after summer's break with thoughts of Voldemort still fresh in his mind. He's ostracized by most, and suffering extreme nightmares and guilt. However, when he meets a new girl called Lyka Zavius, he decides he can try to turn his life around. He doesn't realize just how many secrets Lyka hides.
Rated T for mild cursing and violence
Seventh Year
Chapter 1: A New Start Rated T for mild cursing and violence
Seventh Year
___________________________________
The nightmares had been raging strong as ever. Before him, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry burned to ash, crumbled to rubble; behind him, legions of Death Eaters, hissing and telling him to kill all in his path — friends, classmates, muggle-borns, half-bloods, all deemed unworthy. Draco Malfoy’s tired mind couldn’t be distracted from these visions. Not even the sound of the Hogwarts Express rattling along the tracks could shake them. Trees and mountainous cliffs rushed by the window but he barely registered any of it outside of blurry colors.
He couldn’t stop thinking about how far the Malfoy family had fallen. Every newspaper in the wizarding world talked about them, other Death Eaters, Voldemort’s defeat, and praised how Hogwarts had the fortitude to reopen after summer’s ended.
Despite the bad press, his mother and father insisted he return to school to repeat his seventh and final year — complete his N.E.W.Ts and acquire a job to keep his family wealthy. The past few years replayed in his mind: so much shame, so many regrets. His dull, listless grey eyes gazed out the window.
Being alone in his compartment made it all the more difficult to distract his racing mind. No one wanted to sit with a traitor. The train had been moving for nearly an hour and not a single person came to visit. All those that had seen him had turned away and refused to look. As if his alliance with Voldemort had been of his volition. He hadn’t asked for all that came with the Dark Mark, which now lay as a scar across his battered skin; he hadn’t willed his school burned to the ground; he hadn’t wished for his family and home to be invaded.
Would he ever recover from the shock of all that had happened? His mansion in shambles, his mother rarely spoke, his father was out of work and trying to pull strings in order to get a cushy seat back in the Ministry of Magic, most of whom rejected the idea of an ex-Death Eater being in their midst. The Malfoys had enough money to keep themselves going for perhaps several years or more, but it trickled through their fingers. Whenever he thought about it, a jolt of guilt shot through his body. All those times he’d mocked the Weasley family for being poor and now he’d a good chance of the same happening to him. All because of—
Images of Voldemort popped up in his head. And though Voldemort’s fall was one of the memories he’d held, Draco continuously looked over his shoulder during the summer, fearing that the dark lord would somehow come back and hunt him down for failing so miserably. But he could never have been a Death Eater. In spite of all his tough talk, he hadn’t the stomach for murder or much else outside of insults and petty squabbles. Even that seemed pointless now. Could he really think of himself as better than anyone else? What made him so different from the others, the ones that he’d put down and scorned? He was no better than Ron Weasley, or Hermione Granger, or Harry Potter. They’d shown more backbone, bravery, and intuition than Draco ever had. His stomach burned with sick when he thought of how he used to be.
His compartment door slid open, shocking him enough to jerk his attention toward it. A girl stood in the doorway, looking rather haggard. A pure white cat sauntered in beside her, casually licking its delicate paw like nothing happened — though it also seemed in pretty bad shape.
“Sorry,” the girl apologized to someone passing by. She heaved her suitcase closer to the wall, then she turned to Draco and smiled weakly. “Sorry, my cat got into a fight with someone else’s and I needed to move compartments. Everywhere else is packed. You don’t mind if I—?”
She stopped when Draco looked away, resting his head in his hand as he stared out the window again. She shuffled herself and her bag in, straining to put it on the shelf above her seat. After she plopped down across from Draco, her cat jumped into her lap and batted at the tiny, bright green gemstone hung around her neck.
“Don’t mean to intrude,” she apologized again. “Honestly, I’m surprised this compartment is so empty. All the others had to have five students in each of them.”
Not surprising.
“You don’t mind if I open the window, do you?”
He gave her a simple, soft head shake.
She opened her side of the window, gasping in a deep breath of fresh air. The air chilled the compartment but the cool air on his face helped relieve memories swirling inside his mind. She reclined back into her chair and sighed contentedly, allowing them to fall into silence. He noticed from the corner of his eye her rubbing scratches on her left hand — injuries sustained in breaking up the cat fight, he suspected. Blood trickled out and she wiped it up with the end of her cloak. Her cat, meanwhile, seemed utterly unscathed aside from its flyaway fur and was happy to just clean its side.
The Honeydukes Trolley made its rounds, which prompted an eager, “Ooh, there’s Honeydukes here, too?” Draco nodded, and so she continued, “Ilvermorny had trains just like this with Honeydukes food. Last school I went to, though, had students riding around on giant storm petrels. You can imagine the birds didn’t have food carts. Thank goodness Hogwarts has one — I’m absolutely starving.”
She’d been to other wizarding schools? Made sense, given he’d never seen her before. She could prove an interesting distraction. Considering her mixture of several accents, and knowledge of other schools, she could hold some fascinating stories. Perhaps opening a discussion about them would get his whirlwind of thoughts to settle. Before he could speak, however, the compartment door opened again.
“Anything off the trolley, loves?” Asked the usual plump witch.
“How much can I get for this?” The girl held out her hand, which contained one sickle and one knut.
“Not much I’m afraid.”
“Have anything I can afford that’s filling?”
“I can give you two pumpkin pasties, dear.”
“Oh… Okay, yes please.”
Draco noticed her disheartened frown and slumped shoulders. A twinge of guilt rang through him again and though he wasn’t hungry, he decided he could make a fresh start with this girl. Perhaps this was his one chance to turn his life around. He dug around in his suitcase above the seats, then pulled out a satchel of money and retrieved a few galleons from it.
“What did you want?” He asked the girl.
Her agape features stared at him for a moment before she blurted, “Oh no, no, no, I-I couldn’t—”
“You’re hungry, aren’t you? It’s really no big deal — don’t make me ask again or I might change my mind.”
A huge spread soon laid across both of their laps and seats. Candies and pasties and pumpkin juice, chocolate frogs, licorice wands, butterscotch pudding, Fizzing Whizbees, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, sugar mice, treacle fudge, jelly slugs, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, and so much more. She’d wasted no time in shoveling massive amounts of the food into her mouth. When she finally swallowed, she smiled at Draco.
“Thank you, my friend. I was starving.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“There’s gotta be a way I can repay you. I mean I don’t have a lot of money, but—”
“Don’t mention it,” he repeated, a little more forcefully.
She dropped the subject, instead shoving some Fizzing Whizbees into her mouth and levitating just a few centimeters off her seat. He chose to eat the less magical foods to avoid smoking at the ears.
“You know,” she said abruptly, “you look really familiar for some reason.”
Draco closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh. The last thing he needed was for someone to bring up all the newspaper articles he’d been featured in or try to talk about last year’s War.
“But that’s silly, isn’t it? I’ve never been to Hogwarts before, so… Oh! Should probably introduce myself, right? Lyka Zavius, transferring for hopefully the last time.”
Here it comes… His teeth unclasped his tongue. “Draco Malfoy.”
A twinkle gleamed in her eyes, like she’d remembered something important. She snapped her fingers. “There we go! That’s why I remember you. Well, gusto en conocerte — rather, nice to meet you.”
He was just glad she didn’t bombard him with questions. “You, too.”
She smiled brightly, slamming back another sweet, one which made her hiccup pastel colored bubbles. She picked up one of the chocolate frogs, opening it expertly so that the frog had nowhere to jump but directly into her mouth. Draco watched as she slid one side open and placed her mouth instantly over top the frog as the box parted. He didn’t even get a chance to see the frog before she was happy munching away at the chocolate. She discarded the rest of the box without checking the card.
Figuring she had the right technique, Draco attempted to replicate it. Maybe it was his slow reaction or lack of practice, or even the chocolate’s semi-sentience, but the frog slipped right from under the side of his mouth and leapt through the air toward the open window. In an instant, it was clamped in Lyka’s fist.
“Dibs!” She practically slapped herself across the mouth as she indulged in a second chocolate frog, but she just as quickly took one of her own and tossed it to Draco’s pile. “You guys say that here, right? Dibs?”
“You said this was your first year here?” Draco said with a bit of licorice in his mouth. He’d noticed that she wasn’t wearing any house colors. “I thought Hogwarts didn’t allow transfers.”
“They only let me enroll after Mom and I moved to Dublin. Took the entire summer of forms and requests to the Ministry to get here. Thank God for Kingsley Shacklebolt! He was the push that helped.”
“Yeah? Shacklebolt’s helped my family out a lot, too…” He felt a pang of guilt in his chest just saying that. The man had been far too kind to him and his traitor family.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s a lot more tempered and honest than your previous few.”
“Don’t even get me started.”
Lyka laughed. “Don’t worry, Japan wasn’t doing much better last year. Their Minister got impeached while my mother and I lived there — bakayaro, as he was often called.”
“Japan’s where the storm petrels came from, right? I heard about those birds. Big as one of these train cars. You actually rode on them?”
“Yeah, it was pretty scary at first, but once you got the hang of it, it was a scenic ride. I only got to do it a few times — some of the students even called it boring. I never thought it was.”
“I couldn’t imagine it would be,” he said, lost for a moment in a fantasy of him flying free on the back of a storm petrel. But then a sudden storm cloud cropped up in his fantasy, harboring the dark mark, so he instead continued their conversation. “How many schools have you been to?”
“Three before Hogwarts. Ilvermorny first, then Castelobruxo, then last year was Mahoutokoro.”
“That’s pretty wicked. Only ever been to Hogwarts, myself.”
Conversations continued on pleasantly from there. Her cat, introduced as Picquery, rested himself along her lap as the food cleared, even helping himself to a bit of the treats wherever he could.
The Hogwarts Express finally stopped as the sun set, and all the students piled off the train. First years were called over by Hagrid but the other years all set off toward a large gate. Lyka followed Draco to a carriage, pulled by the skeletal horses. He used to have the pleasure of not seeing them.
Before he could help Lyka up onto the carriage, a familiar voice called out.
“You’re Lyka Zavius, ain’tcha?” Hagrid asked.
“Oh, yes!” She squeaked. “Sorry, am I going the wrong way?”
“Ye need to getcher House all sorted out,” he said, then he leaned down and muttered, “I’m afraid that means ye gotta ride along wit’ the firs’ years.”
“Okay,” she said with a titter. “My bad.” Before heading off, she turned to Draco and waved. “See you inside!”
He allowed himself one tired waved back, then watched her walk off with Hagrid. The carriage rolled along the walkway and those riding with him ignored his presence, which, of course, left him to his thoughts. Rather than allowing himself to be consumed by his past, he attempted to look toward the present, watching as Hogwarts once again drew closer.
He couldn’t stop thinking about how far the Malfoy family had fallen. Every newspaper in the wizarding world talked about them, other Death Eaters, Voldemort’s defeat, and praised how Hogwarts had the fortitude to reopen after summer’s ended.
Despite the bad press, his mother and father insisted he return to school to repeat his seventh and final year — complete his N.E.W.Ts and acquire a job to keep his family wealthy. The past few years replayed in his mind: so much shame, so many regrets. His dull, listless grey eyes gazed out the window.
Being alone in his compartment made it all the more difficult to distract his racing mind. No one wanted to sit with a traitor. The train had been moving for nearly an hour and not a single person came to visit. All those that had seen him had turned away and refused to look. As if his alliance with Voldemort had been of his volition. He hadn’t asked for all that came with the Dark Mark, which now lay as a scar across his battered skin; he hadn’t willed his school burned to the ground; he hadn’t wished for his family and home to be invaded.
Would he ever recover from the shock of all that had happened? His mansion in shambles, his mother rarely spoke, his father was out of work and trying to pull strings in order to get a cushy seat back in the Ministry of Magic, most of whom rejected the idea of an ex-Death Eater being in their midst. The Malfoys had enough money to keep themselves going for perhaps several years or more, but it trickled through their fingers. Whenever he thought about it, a jolt of guilt shot through his body. All those times he’d mocked the Weasley family for being poor and now he’d a good chance of the same happening to him. All because of—
Images of Voldemort popped up in his head. And though Voldemort’s fall was one of the memories he’d held, Draco continuously looked over his shoulder during the summer, fearing that the dark lord would somehow come back and hunt him down for failing so miserably. But he could never have been a Death Eater. In spite of all his tough talk, he hadn’t the stomach for murder or much else outside of insults and petty squabbles. Even that seemed pointless now. Could he really think of himself as better than anyone else? What made him so different from the others, the ones that he’d put down and scorned? He was no better than Ron Weasley, or Hermione Granger, or Harry Potter. They’d shown more backbone, bravery, and intuition than Draco ever had. His stomach burned with sick when he thought of how he used to be.
His compartment door slid open, shocking him enough to jerk his attention toward it. A girl stood in the doorway, looking rather haggard. A pure white cat sauntered in beside her, casually licking its delicate paw like nothing happened — though it also seemed in pretty bad shape.
“Sorry,” the girl apologized to someone passing by. She heaved her suitcase closer to the wall, then she turned to Draco and smiled weakly. “Sorry, my cat got into a fight with someone else’s and I needed to move compartments. Everywhere else is packed. You don’t mind if I—?”
She stopped when Draco looked away, resting his head in his hand as he stared out the window again. She shuffled herself and her bag in, straining to put it on the shelf above her seat. After she plopped down across from Draco, her cat jumped into her lap and batted at the tiny, bright green gemstone hung around her neck.
“Don’t mean to intrude,” she apologized again. “Honestly, I’m surprised this compartment is so empty. All the others had to have five students in each of them.”
Not surprising.
“You don’t mind if I open the window, do you?”
He gave her a simple, soft head shake.
She opened her side of the window, gasping in a deep breath of fresh air. The air chilled the compartment but the cool air on his face helped relieve memories swirling inside his mind. She reclined back into her chair and sighed contentedly, allowing them to fall into silence. He noticed from the corner of his eye her rubbing scratches on her left hand — injuries sustained in breaking up the cat fight, he suspected. Blood trickled out and she wiped it up with the end of her cloak. Her cat, meanwhile, seemed utterly unscathed aside from its flyaway fur and was happy to just clean its side.
The Honeydukes Trolley made its rounds, which prompted an eager, “Ooh, there’s Honeydukes here, too?” Draco nodded, and so she continued, “Ilvermorny had trains just like this with Honeydukes food. Last school I went to, though, had students riding around on giant storm petrels. You can imagine the birds didn’t have food carts. Thank goodness Hogwarts has one — I’m absolutely starving.”
She’d been to other wizarding schools? Made sense, given he’d never seen her before. She could prove an interesting distraction. Considering her mixture of several accents, and knowledge of other schools, she could hold some fascinating stories. Perhaps opening a discussion about them would get his whirlwind of thoughts to settle. Before he could speak, however, the compartment door opened again.
“Anything off the trolley, loves?” Asked the usual plump witch.
“How much can I get for this?” The girl held out her hand, which contained one sickle and one knut.
“Not much I’m afraid.”
“Have anything I can afford that’s filling?”
“I can give you two pumpkin pasties, dear.”
“Oh… Okay, yes please.”
Draco noticed her disheartened frown and slumped shoulders. A twinge of guilt rang through him again and though he wasn’t hungry, he decided he could make a fresh start with this girl. Perhaps this was his one chance to turn his life around. He dug around in his suitcase above the seats, then pulled out a satchel of money and retrieved a few galleons from it.
“What did you want?” He asked the girl.
Her agape features stared at him for a moment before she blurted, “Oh no, no, no, I-I couldn’t—”
“You’re hungry, aren’t you? It’s really no big deal — don’t make me ask again or I might change my mind.”
A huge spread soon laid across both of their laps and seats. Candies and pasties and pumpkin juice, chocolate frogs, licorice wands, butterscotch pudding, Fizzing Whizbees, Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans, sugar mice, treacle fudge, jelly slugs, Drooble’s Best Blowing Gum, and so much more. She’d wasted no time in shoveling massive amounts of the food into her mouth. When she finally swallowed, she smiled at Draco.
“Thank you, my friend. I was starving.”
“Don’t mention it.”
“There’s gotta be a way I can repay you. I mean I don’t have a lot of money, but—”
“Don’t mention it,” he repeated, a little more forcefully.
She dropped the subject, instead shoving some Fizzing Whizbees into her mouth and levitating just a few centimeters off her seat. He chose to eat the less magical foods to avoid smoking at the ears.
“You know,” she said abruptly, “you look really familiar for some reason.”
Draco closed his eyes, suppressing a sigh. The last thing he needed was for someone to bring up all the newspaper articles he’d been featured in or try to talk about last year’s War.
“But that’s silly, isn’t it? I’ve never been to Hogwarts before, so… Oh! Should probably introduce myself, right? Lyka Zavius, transferring for hopefully the last time.”
Here it comes… His teeth unclasped his tongue. “Draco Malfoy.”
A twinkle gleamed in her eyes, like she’d remembered something important. She snapped her fingers. “There we go! That’s why I remember you. Well, gusto en conocerte — rather, nice to meet you.”
He was just glad she didn’t bombard him with questions. “You, too.”
She smiled brightly, slamming back another sweet, one which made her hiccup pastel colored bubbles. She picked up one of the chocolate frogs, opening it expertly so that the frog had nowhere to jump but directly into her mouth. Draco watched as she slid one side open and placed her mouth instantly over top the frog as the box parted. He didn’t even get a chance to see the frog before she was happy munching away at the chocolate. She discarded the rest of the box without checking the card.
Figuring she had the right technique, Draco attempted to replicate it. Maybe it was his slow reaction or lack of practice, or even the chocolate’s semi-sentience, but the frog slipped right from under the side of his mouth and leapt through the air toward the open window. In an instant, it was clamped in Lyka’s fist.
“Dibs!” She practically slapped herself across the mouth as she indulged in a second chocolate frog, but she just as quickly took one of her own and tossed it to Draco’s pile. “You guys say that here, right? Dibs?”
“You said this was your first year here?” Draco said with a bit of licorice in his mouth. He’d noticed that she wasn’t wearing any house colors. “I thought Hogwarts didn’t allow transfers.”
“They only let me enroll after Mom and I moved to Dublin. Took the entire summer of forms and requests to the Ministry to get here. Thank God for Kingsley Shacklebolt! He was the push that helped.”
“Yeah? Shacklebolt’s helped my family out a lot, too…” He felt a pang of guilt in his chest just saying that. The man had been far too kind to him and his traitor family.
“From what I’ve heard, he’s a lot more tempered and honest than your previous few.”
“Don’t even get me started.”
Lyka laughed. “Don’t worry, Japan wasn’t doing much better last year. Their Minister got impeached while my mother and I lived there — bakayaro, as he was often called.”
“Japan’s where the storm petrels came from, right? I heard about those birds. Big as one of these train cars. You actually rode on them?”
“Yeah, it was pretty scary at first, but once you got the hang of it, it was a scenic ride. I only got to do it a few times — some of the students even called it boring. I never thought it was.”
“I couldn’t imagine it would be,” he said, lost for a moment in a fantasy of him flying free on the back of a storm petrel. But then a sudden storm cloud cropped up in his fantasy, harboring the dark mark, so he instead continued their conversation. “How many schools have you been to?”
“Three before Hogwarts. Ilvermorny first, then Castelobruxo, then last year was Mahoutokoro.”
“That’s pretty wicked. Only ever been to Hogwarts, myself.”
Conversations continued on pleasantly from there. Her cat, introduced as Picquery, rested himself along her lap as the food cleared, even helping himself to a bit of the treats wherever he could.
The Hogwarts Express finally stopped as the sun set, and all the students piled off the train. First years were called over by Hagrid but the other years all set off toward a large gate. Lyka followed Draco to a carriage, pulled by the skeletal horses. He used to have the pleasure of not seeing them.
Before he could help Lyka up onto the carriage, a familiar voice called out.
“You’re Lyka Zavius, ain’tcha?” Hagrid asked.
“Oh, yes!” She squeaked. “Sorry, am I going the wrong way?”
“Ye need to getcher House all sorted out,” he said, then he leaned down and muttered, “I’m afraid that means ye gotta ride along wit’ the firs’ years.”
“Okay,” she said with a titter. “My bad.” Before heading off, she turned to Draco and waved. “See you inside!”
He allowed himself one tired waved back, then watched her walk off with Hagrid. The carriage rolled along the walkway and those riding with him ignored his presence, which, of course, left him to his thoughts. Rather than allowing himself to be consumed by his past, he attempted to look toward the present, watching as Hogwarts once again drew closer.