A/N:
Hello everyone! Some feedback would really mean a lot. I'm trying to keep the writing clean and avoid overly long monologues. I'm assuming that if you're reading this, you're already somewhat familiar with Harry Potter, so I'm not going too heavy on descriptions and background details.
That said, let me know—would you like more detail in future chapters? Comments, reviews, and power stones would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you for reading!
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Abraxas had been wrong about one thing: the Dark Lord had no intention of staying dead. He was always planning to return.
But Draco had to admit — experience counted for something. His grandfather's other assessments of the Dark Lord had been remarkably close to the mark.
It was hardly surprising. An abiding interest in mysticism, alchemy, and the darker branches of magic seemed to be a Malfoy inheritance. Abraxas had spent decades observing and collecting, and his instincts were sharp.
Reviewing the Dark Lord's documented behaviours and patterns, Draco found that they aligned precisely with what his grandfather had described: erratic, deteriorating judgement, a gradual departure from recognisably human appearance and temperament. That was the Dark Lord he remembered. The signs of a soul fractured beyond natural repair.
He paced the length of the Malfoy library, working through a problem that had been forming since Christmas.
There was a Horcrux at Hogwarts. He was nearly certain of it. Ravenclaw's diadem — lost for centuries, supposedly — was hidden in the Room of Requirement. He remembered, from his previous life, that Potter had been searching for it during the final battle, right up until the moment the room was destroyed by Fiendfyre. At the time, Draco hadn't understood why. Now he did.
If the diadem was a Horcrux — one of several vessels containing fragments of Voldemort's soul — then it had to be destroyed. Without it, without all of them, the Dark Lord could simply return again and again. No defeat would be permanent.
The question of how a fragmented soul could possess a living person — as Voldemort had possessed Quirrell — still nagged at him. Abraxas's explanation of Horcruxes didn't account for it. Either it was a different order of dark magic entirely, or it was a consequence of repeated soul-splitting that even Abraxas hadn't encountered in his reading.
Draco needed to know more, and the Malfoy library was the best place to start.
The collection was extraordinary. Centuries of acquisition, some of it through entirely legitimate means and some through Lucius's particular network of "special channels" — manuscripts from fallen families, rare volumes absorbed from the libraries of houses that had declined or been extinguished. Many of the Sacred Twenty-Eight had possessed unique magical inheritances, and those inheritances did not always survive the families themselves. The Malfoys had made it something of a tradition to ensure the books, at least, endured.
For dark magic specifically, there were volumes here that the Hogwarts Restricted Section had never held.
Unfortunately, the collection's scope was also the problem. Draco had spent the entire morning searching through it and found nothing directly useful. He finally snapped his fingers in frustration.
There was a soft crack, and Dobby appeared.
He stood in the middle of the library floor, wearing a tattered, filthy pillowcase, blinking his enormous protuberant eyes. He bowed so deeply that his long nose nearly touched the floorboards.
"Young Master called, and Dobby is here," he said in his high, reedy voice. "What can Dobby do?"
Draco had expected this, and had prepared himself for it, and still found the full reality of Dobby somewhat arresting.
The house-elf before him was, by any reasonable measure, wretched. Bent, threadbare, enormous-eared, with that expression of desperate eagerness mixed with habitual flinching that Draco associated with years of harsh treatment. In another life — or rather, in this same life, several years forward — this creature had risked everything to help Harry Potter escape Malfoy Manor, and had died in the attempt. Quietly, loyally, without asking for anything.
Draco had thought very little of Dobby in his first life. He was thinking quite a lot about him now.
The problem with Dobby was not the creature itself. The problem was what Dobby knew.
House-elves who had served a family for years accumulated an intimate knowledge of that family's secrets — the kinds of secrets that could be profoundly damaging in the wrong hands. Lucius's approach had been to rule through fear, and fear had not worked. It had produced resentment, and resentment in an intelligent creature was always a liability. In Draco's previous life, Dobby had eventually been freed and had used his knowledge to help Potter. He had not used it to actively harm the Malfoys, which in retrospect was an enormous stroke of luck. There was no guarantee the same restraint would hold through an entirely different sequence of events.
Draco did not intend to leave that to chance.
He would try a different approach.
"Sit down," Draco said, nodding toward the armchair beside him.
Dobby froze. His enormous eyes filled immediately with tears.
"Sit — sit down — the master has told Dobby to sit — as if —" He dissolved entirely into loud, heaving sobs. "No master has ever — never, never—"
"Yes, quite," Draco said, attempting a soothing expression and managing something closer to pained. "Come now. Sit down."
Dobby perched on the absolute edge of the armchair, bolt upright, not permitting himself to touch the back of it. He looked, Draco thought, like a very ugly ornament that had been placed there by someone with a difficult sense of humour. His bat-like ears drooped with emotion. His eyes, swimming with tears, remained fixed on Draco with an expression of stricken gratitude.
Every fibre of Draco's being recoiled. He had forgotten, or perhaps simply suppressed, quite how much he found Dobby's particular combination of helplessness and fervour difficult to endure. He breathed steadily and reminded himself that this was not the time.
"Dobby," he said, with considerable patience. "I called you here because I need your assistance."
Dobby let out a piercing squeal of joy at the word assistance and clutched his pillowcase so tightly that it made a tearing sound.
"Dobby will do anything — anything — for his masters!" he wailed happily, wiping his face with a corner of the filthy pillowcase.
Draco resisted looking at this more closely than necessary. "Good. I need you to search this library for every book that makes any reference to Horcruxes. Any reference at all. Bring them to me."
The word landed like a stone.
Dobby's face crumpled with something that was clearly fear, or revulsion, or both. His ears flattened. But above the fear was the overwhelming pressure of Draco's unprecedented kindness, and that pressure won.
"Dobby will find them," he said, in a very small voice. "For the young master. Dobby will find them."
"Good. And this stays between us," Draco said. "No one else is to know. Not a word."
Dobby nodded vigorously, and immediately began to move through the library with a surprising nimbleness — darting along the shelves, tilting his head to read the spines, pulling volumes forward and replacing them with rapid, practised efficiency.
Draco watched him for a moment, then picked up his own reading.
The library door opened.
Lucius stood in the doorway. His expression went through several changes in quick succession: bewilderment, offence, and then something approaching nausea.
"What," he said, "is that doing in here?"
Dobby had frozen mid-reach on the upper shelves, three books tucked under one arm, blinking down at Lucius with enormous, terrified eyes.
"I asked him to help," Draco said, setting his book down and rising. "I'm having trouble locating some references for my homework. Dobby is searching the shelves."
Lucius regarded Dobby from below with the expression of a man who has discovered something unexpectedly foul on the sole of his boot.
"I was not aware you could read," he said to Dobby, with freezing hauteur. Then, to Draco: "See that it doesn't damage anything."
He was already turning to leave when he paused, half-turned, and looked back at Dobby with narrowed eyes.
"You slovenly creature. See to Draco's needs properly. If you make a single error, you know what to expect."
Dobby quivered. He nodded until his enormous ears made a faint rattling sound, and watched Lucius leave with the expression of something trying very hard not to remember something.
The door closed.
Draco exhaled slowly. He looked up at Dobby, who was still frozen on the upper shelf like a very peculiar gargoyle.
"Dobby," he said, with weary practicality. "The clothing."
Dobby looked down at himself.
"You are representing the Malfoy household," Draco said. "The other house-elves are all dressed appropriately. That pillowcase is —" he searched briefly for something that wasn't simply cruel — "not suitable for working in this room. The books alone are worth more than most wizarding estates, and they require careful handling. You should present yourself accordingly."
"Master cares about Dobby's clothes!" Dobby gasped, so overcome that the books slipped. He caught them — narrowly — and then, in a rapid overcorrection of guilt, began slamming his head against the nearest shelf.
"Dobby dropped — bad Dobby, wicked Dobby—"
"Stop!" Draco was across the room in three strides, one hand shooting out to steady the shelf before the entire row came down. "Stop that immediately. You will not damage the books."
Dobby stopped, breathing hard. He clutched the recovered volumes to his chest and looked at Draco with enormous, wet eyes.
Draco counted to three, silently.
"The books are unharmed," he said, with great restraint. "Continue searching. When you find the relevant volumes, bring them to me at once. This may take some time — there's no hurry. Take care with everything you handle."
Dobby straightened, composed himself with visible effort, and resumed his search.
Draco made for the door, then paused. He reached into his pocket, withdrew a Galleon, and held it out.
Dobby stared at it as though he had never seen a coin before.
"For your work," Draco said. "Consider it a wage. Use it to buy yourself proper clothing. And to be clear —" He caught Dobby's eyes. "I am not giving you clothes. I am paying you a salary, which you may spend as you choose. Do you understand the difference?"
He knew the rule precisely. A house-elf was freed only when their master directly presented them with clothing. A Galleon was something else entirely.
Dobby took the coin with trembling fingers.
"Master —" he began.
"Don't make a scene about it," Draco said, and left the library.
Behind him, he heard the sound of Dobby dissolving completely.
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Side Story Three: The Detestable Dobby (Lucius's Perspective)
Lucius Malfoy had always found excessive emotion deeply distasteful.
He found it most distasteful in Dobby.
Every house-elf in service to the Malfoy family had, over the years, been expected to maintain standards befitting the household — discretion, competence, immaculate appearance, and above all, quiet. Dobby had, since his earliest service, failed to satisfy any of these requirements with any consistency. He was slovenly, prone to blundering, and given to emotional displays of such volume and frequency that simply walking past whatever corner the creature had been assigned to could ruin an otherwise composed morning.
Lucius had considered disposing of him more than once in his younger years. His father had counselled against it. A house-elf who had served in Malfoy Manor for any length of time knew things — the layout, the habits, the comings and goings, the nature of certain items kept in certain rooms. Releasing such a creature was not a trivial risk. Better, his father had said, to keep the elf close and controlled, and run it into the ground doing kitchen work in the basement.
"You are not to present yourself before the family unless directly summoned," Lucius had told it, years ago, with all the warmth of a closed door. "You will remain below."
He had not expected to see Dobby again in any room above ground level for the foreseeable future.
And then, that morning, he had opened the library door.
There was Dobby. Clambering along his shelves. Handling his books with those — hands. While Draco sat in the reading chair watching it with an expression of — what was that — encouragement?
Lucius pinched the bridge of his nose briefly after leaving and resumed walking.
He did not, as a rule, second-guess Draco. The boy had always shown sound instincts — better than average, in fact, and better than one had any right to expect at eleven years old. If Draco had decided that Dobby served some purpose to him, there was presumably a reason.
It was simply that the reason defied rational imagination.
Hmph. First-year coursework, and rather than approaching his own father with a question — who would have answered it promptly and correctly — he had elected to deploy that creature in the library. What kind of logic was that?
Lucius allowed himself one moment of paternal exasperation, and then put it aside. The boy was almost twelve. It was, perhaps, time for him to have his own house-elf — someone assigned specifically to his needs, at his disposal, bound to him directly.
Admittedly, Dobby was not the house-elf Lucius would have selected for this purpose. He would have chosen something better-presented, better-tempered, and less likely to cause a scene in a room full of irreplaceable volumes.
But Draco had apparently formed some opinion on the matter, and running his own small experiment in management was not the worst exercise for a young wizard.
He would probably regret it within the week.
That evening, Lucius had Dobby brought before him.
"From this point forward," he said, regarding the elf with the same expression he reserved for correspondence he had already decided to burn, "you serve Draco Malfoy directly. You are subject to his instruction in all things. You will protect him. You will carry out his orders without exception, and without error. You will not betray him, or this house, or speak of its affairs to any outside party. These are your obligations for the remainder of your life."
Dobby, to Lucius's mild surprise, did not cry.
He placed his long ears flat against the floor in a bow of complete submission and said, in an unusually steady voice, "Yes, Master."
"Swear it," Lucius said. "Say the words."
"Dobby swears," the elf repeated, each word deliberate. "To serve and protect Draco Malfoy. To obey. To never betray."
"Good."
The bond settled into place with the faint resonance that accompanied all house-elf oaths. Lucius dismissed the creature with a wave, and it vanished with a crack.
He stood for a moment in the silence of the study.
The exercise might teach Draco something useful — that the selection of one's servants, like the selection of one's allies, required discernment. Convenience and sentiment were poor criteria. Results were what mattered.
In a few days, Draco would almost certainly come to that conclusion himself, and send Dobby back to the kitchens.
Lucius permitted himself a thin smile at the empty room and went to find something worth the remainder of his evening.