Chapter Text
Draco isn’t going to survive sixth year.
Or, if he does, he’ll end up an orphan, his parents paying for his failure with their lives. Because he’s never going to fix this stupid, thrice-damned vanishing cabinet, and none of his plans to kill Dumbledore are having anything even resembling success, and he hasn’t slept for more than three hours straight in months, and Potter.
Keeps.
Watching him.
The nosy git keeps following him with all the subtlety of rampaging hippogriff, and he can’t seem to escape the weight of that prying stare. If he thought he could manage it, Draco might try to gouge the other boy’s eyes out to get a moment of peace. But with how his luck’s been, he’d just bollocks that up too.
Going home for the Christmas holidays is hardly the reprieve he needs. The manor is a shadow of its former self with Voldemort polluting it. He tries to comfort his mother, tries to take solace from her, but Voldemort’s oppressive presence and the ominous remarks he makes whenever he sees Draco are enough to have him wish he was back at Hogwarts.
As he celebrates the new year tucked away in his room, drinking straight from his second bottle of elf-made wine and feeling absolutely wretched, he decides that if he’s going to die, he might as well go out with a bang.
So, he collects the necessary ingredients and starts brewing as soon as he returns to school. At least in this he feels assured of something going right.
The next week, he’s walking down a Hogwarts corridor shortly after dinner has started when he feels Potter’s eyes on him again. Taking care to look particularly suspicious, he starts towards one of the unused hallways, where the lamps are dimmer and the portraits are few and far between – and, more often than not, asleep.
He hears the soft tap of Potter’s footsteps tailing him, and turns a corner abruptly, before waiting with his wand raised for Potter to appear. The look of wide-eyed surprise as his impedimenta catches the other boy in the chest is a little offensive – did Potter not even consider him a threat?
While Potter’s stalled, Draco draws a vial of the potion he’d brewed out of his robe pocket, uncorks it and tips it into Potter’s mouth. Draco presses his hands over Potter’s mouth and nose, forcing the boy to swallow mere seconds before he regains mobility. He steps back out of range as Potter swipes at him, looking angry and pale. He levels his wand once more, and just before Potter is able to cast something at him, Draco calls out, “Obliviate!”
He’s a dab hand at memory charms, and this memory is as recent as can be, so it’s the work of a moment to make Potter forget he ever caught up to Draco. As he sneaks off, Draco gleefully thinks of how Potter will embarrass himself with some truly ridiculous pining. He can’t wait to watch.
Then Potter ruins it all by disappearing the following night.
Shite.
They didn’t even have any classes together that day; he completely missed out on seeing Potter mooning and sighing like a moron. What a waste.