Chapter 1
One morning at breakfast, Astoria Greengrass crosses the lifeless ocean dividing the half-empty Slytherin table into Draco’s island, where he sits alone, and the continent, where everyone else is. She takes the seat across from him and without any preamble, recites: “Luna Lovegood told me that Ginny Weasley told her that Hermione Granger told her that Harry Potter wants to buy some goods from you.”
Draco only looks up at Astoria when she drops Potter’s name. The goods, of course, require no explanation. Smuggling contraband into the school is the only meager social capital in Draco’s possession; and, loath as he might be to admit it, his only source of real capital as well. He is the de facto successor of the Weasley twins. Unlike them, however, he will happily smuggle anything, from jokes and pranks to booze, age-restricted potions, adult literature, memory vials and—his most sought-after merchandise—Muggle drugs.
He glances past Astoria’s shoulder and across the expanse of the Great Hall at the Gryffindor table, where he-Weasley and Granger sit on each side of Potter like bodyguards, expertly deflecting any and all attempts of the student body to approach him. Sadly, the days of the staring contests between him and Draco belong to the past, like so many other things, some good, some bad. Potter stares at his porridge over the bags under his eyes as he has done at every meal for the last four weeks.
“What goods,” Draco says, buttering his toast with much less interest than he’d had in it before Astoria’s appearance.
“Weed,” she mouths.
Two years ago, Draco would’ve sooner believed that Santa Clause is a Muggle than that Potter might genuinely want to do drugs, but now it’s not at all difficult to imagine. Precious few people don’t, these days. And Lovegood is a known player. She has bought from him, albeit through Astoria, several times before. Besides, if Potter and co. wanted to put him in Azkaban, they wouldn’t have testified in his defense at the trial.
“How much?”
“One baggie.”
Draco bites into his toast and chews it mechanically. “No problem,” he says, after gulping down with considerable difficulty. “Tell Lovegood to tell Weasley to tell Granger to tell Potter to meet me in the Quad Yard after dinner.”
Astoria blinks at him. “I doubt it’ll be him.”
Draco shrugs. It was worth a try.
“How… much?” she asks, cringing from the indignity of it.
“Four galleons.” He doesn’t cringe: not without, and not within. It’s double what an experienced Muggle might pay, but being the only supplier selling to a bunch of mostly clueless wixen, Draco’s at liberty to make an outrageous profit. Even Father would be forced to agree it’s excellent business.
“I’ll pass it on.”
Astoria leaves Draco with his toast. He makes himself eat it while studiously looking anywhere but at Potter.
The goods are kept in a false-bottom drawer of his trunk. A Notice Me Not charm is weaved around it subtly enough to pass the detection by Auror search spells. He would know; the raids of the Manor and Borgin and Burke’s have honed his sense for it to perfection.
Draco takes stock during lunch break. There are only three baggies of weed in the stash: one Cuban, reserved by some Ravenclaws, and two Algerian, as yet unsold. Obviously, the names are made up. It’s all homegrown. When it isn’t, he sells it at four, sometimes six times the price.
It’s decent stuff. Draco makes sure to sample the goods before selling, so he can give accurate recommendations. The Cuban goes in smoothly, with gorgeous smell and taste, but makes one restless and irritable, and has a rough comedown. The Algerian has a thick odor and burns the throat like spicy food, but it’s very sweet and mellow afterwards and puts one down gently. Between the two, Draco would definitely choose the latter. But for Potter—and he still can’t quite believe it, though there’s nothing too strange about it, only that he hadn’t dared hope—for Potter, nothing but the very best would do.
After rummaging through the wares, Draco rips a page out of his journal, keyed in to his wand and the token he’s left with Leo so that no one else can see the writing on it, and puts down an order for a batch of the Sicilian Gold. His absolute favorite, honey-scented and sweet on the tongue, it has never once made him cough; and it stirs such a complex bouquet of emotion: a dash of nostalgia and a pinch of melancholy with a generous serving of delight and something akin to love. He’d take one baggie for himself.
He scribbles a few other requisitions: Amortentia, Veritaserum, Calming Draught, Dreamless Sleep—always in high demand—gin, vodka, tequila, ecstasy, and for himself, a six-pack of lemon-flavored Muggle butterbear. Almost a hundred galleons, altogether. But he’ll make thrice as much.
The order and the money go into the bottom drawer of his trunk: the one he’s enchanted as a vanishing cabinet. Usually, it takes no more than a few hours for the supplies to come through, shrunken to 1/8 scale by the charm he’s installed on the other end. But this time he adds an “Urgent!” to the foot of the order, just to be sure.
Lovegood shows up to make the trade. Her robes hang open and askew over her narrow shoulders, showing a slice of a wrinkled shirt, a ghastly yellow skirt and mismatched shoes. A dizzying assortment of handmade accessories in every color known to man adorns her hair, neck, wrists and ankles. But gone is the wispy girl who sang ludicrous songs to herself in the Manor dungeons. She’s grown into a gorgeous young woman.
She doesn’t look at Draco, keeping her eyes stubbornly pointed at the mid distance somewhere to his left, even when they join hands under the wide sleeves of their robes as Draco passes her the baggie of the Sicilian, and she passes him the four gold coins.
“Do you know what to do with that?” he asks. He always asks the first time around, and keeps all the accessories stocked. Not that he cares. But he needs his clients to have a good time so they’d come to him again.
“Oh, yes,” Lovegood says, smiling almost delightedly at whatever she sees next to him. “Thank you.”
His pulse speeds up as he considers trying to make more conversation. The truth is, he’s dying to know where they’re going to smoke. Out by the lake? Some secret place in the castle? Perhaps the Room of Requirement still opens, for Potter.
Swallowing the envy, the loneliness, the guilt, he just nods, and hurries back inside. Up the stairs, across the bridge, and up more stairs, till he’s on top of the Astronomy Tower. Encased in charms to ward off the freezing wind, he fills up his pipe and smokes alone.
Two days later, in a repeat performance, Astoria sets up another trade. Only this time, it’s Ginny Weasley who comes to make it.
And she looks at him alright. She drills holes in him with her heated, hateful stare, until he is the one averting his eyes.
“Is it the same stuff as the last time?” she asks, pocketing the baggie.
“Yes.”
“It was really good,” she says, though one wouldn’t think it from the fierceness of her frown. “Only it… didn’t work for Harry.”
Of course it didn’t, Draco thinks, feeling like he’s been punched in the gut. Potter wouldn’t be the special snowflake if it did, would he?
“First time?” he asks aloud.
“Yeah.”
Draco shrugs. “Happens. Took half a dozen times for me.” More like three, but it won’t hurt to set the bar even lower.
“Right.”
Not wanting to be like Lovegood, he risks another glance at she-Weasley’s eyes. “Have a good one, then.”
She’s squinting at him now, and that’s even worse. “Yeah.”
He’s half way to his sanctuary at the top of the Astronomy Tower when a familiar “Hey, Malfoy!” reaches him from one of the alcoves in the fourth-floor corridor. Glancing left and right—perfunctory; he couldn’t care less if he’s seen or not—he allows Benjamin Sallow, the seventh year Hufflepuff prefect, to pull him behind a tapestry and push on his shoulders till Draco kneels.
Benjamin Sallow is the younger brother of Isabella Sallow, who’d given Draco a world of trouble as the Slytherin prefect in his first four years at Hogwarts. She’s in France now, a reserve on the national Screaming Sevens team. Her brother had the misfortune of remaining in England with their father, who died in the service of the Dark Lord, and of receiving a full year of education under the Carrows. The experience has left him addicted to Dreamless Sleep. He’s one of Draco’s best customers.
He’s also one of Draco’s more predictable bullies.
“That’s it, faggot,” he whispers coarsely when Draco manages to open his throat. “That’s all you’re good for, isn’t it? Fucking Death Eater trash.” And so on, and so forth. It never goes beyond words, though. Not with Sallow. Unlike his sister, he doesn’t have the guts for real violence. Hesitation trembles in his hands as he holds the back of Draco’s head, thrusting shallowly, gently. When Draco chokes, Sallow lets go at once.
It gets quite a bit rougher with others. Like the pack of sixth- and seventh-year Gryffindors. They’re not interested in throwing insults or having their cocks sucked. It’s just fists and hexes. Or the Ray brothers—both in Ravenclaw, one a sixth-year on the Quidditch team, the other, an eighth-year—who do not let go when Draco chokes. Once they tried to actually rape him. And he… considered it. But in the end, he decided a line had to be drawn somewhere, and fought them off.
“Oh fuck, oh fuck,” Sallow groans as his seed finally dribbles into the back of Draco’s mouth. He’s good looking: wide and dark, hazel-eyed. Draco walks away with sore knees, wet lashes, and a hardon that keeps aching till he falls asleep.
When the next trade is done by Granger, Draco gets the definite sense of moving up in the world.
“Aren’t you afraid of what will happen if you’re discovered?” she asks, watching him search his pockets. He has three other customers lined up after this.
What she means, of course, is his parole.
“Why, Granger.” He gives her a shadow of his old smirk, but keeps his voice placid. “You aren’t worried about me, are you?”
“We’ve gone to considerable lengths to keep you out of Azkaban, you know. Harry and Luna and I. It seems really stupid to risk your freedom now, for… this.”
He fishes out the correct baggie at last. “Has it worked for Potter yet?”
“No.”
“And for you?”
“Yes.”
“Well, then,” he says after they’ve made the exchange. “Have a good one.”
“Is it the money?”
Draco heaves a dramatic sigh. “No, Granger. It’s because I enjoy being a criminal and this is all just practice for my glorious future as the king of Knockturn Alley. Merlin’s sake. What else could it possibly be?”
“There are other ways to make money,” she points out, unperturbed.
“Oh, yes. Because well-wishing, honest employers will be lining up at my graduation to hire the destitute ex Death Eater. The queue will stretch all the way to Hogsmeade! I can’t believe I’ve been so blind! Thank you ever so much for opening my eyes.”
His voice wavers, there, at the end, as excitement the likes of which he hasn’t felt in years rises from his chest, unchecked. He regrets it at once. Too much, too open, too bitter, and—
Granger laughs. “I’ve forgotten how theatrical you can be.”
The new shipment arrives with a note, scribbled in the neat-looking but illegible cursive of an alchemist. “Bad news first,” it says. “Algerian is out of stock.”
Draco tuts. He’s already sold four baggies and the connoisseurs who put in specific orders don’t appreciate getting something else instead.
“The good news is, I got my hands on some Dutch skunk. It doesn’t smell great, but it’s excellent otherwise,” and there follows a miniature stylized drawing of a Muggle chef kissing his fingers. Leo must’ve been high while writing.
Unlike the Cuban, Algerian and Sicillian, the Dutch is genuinely from the Netherlands, and it’s in a different tier altogether from the homegrown stuff. Draco’s only had it once before, and sold it at 10 galleons per 1/4 of a baggie. His mouth waters at the prospect.
“Also low on Veritaserum,” the note goes on, and Draco sighs. “The next batch will probably be second-grade stuff. Must find a new supplier, or start brewing myself. Tycho’s gone down, allegedly for DE connections. No one’s heard anything for a week.”
Draco lowers the note, chewing the inside of his cheek while he thinks about it. Tycho was their number one potions supplier. Their potions were so potent, Draco could dilute them twice and thrice over and still sell at the price of standard purity. Long-term, this would definitely impact his earnings.
He finds himself rehearsing the conversation with Granger from the other night. But he has covered all the angles, hasn’t he? If someone rats him out, all he needs to do is crack the knuckle of his middle finger—something he could do even if bound and gagged—and the smooth chip of goblin silver he enchanted with the Protean charm, miniaturized, and Apparated under the skin, would trigger the release of the goods from the false-bottom drawer into the vanishing drawer. A thorough search might reveal the enchantments, but no material evidence. And the howler he always keeps there with the goods would find Leo and warn him to incinerate everything, including the matched box.
If questioned, Draco would say that he had enchanted the drawer as part of his desperate attempts to repair the infamous vanishing cabinet in 1996, which is true. And if worst comes to worst, he has managed to resist Veritaserum twice already: he could do it again.
But there’s always a risk. And with every arrest made possible thanks to the information Father’s been feeding the DMLE in the hope of sentence commutation, the day draws closer when Draco will be the last marked Death Eater at large. No amount of ‘lying low’ will keep him out of the public eye of a vengeful Wizarding Britain, then.
Of course, he has no intention to stick around long enough to see that happen. Which is why his business needs to keep flowing uninterrupted.
“Draco,” says the last line of the note, and Draco’s heart shrinks preemptively. “Be careful. And write to me, you muppet. I miss you.” Draco grimaces. “Yours, Leo.”
Write. Write about what? His Advanced Arithmancy and Astronomy studies? Benjamin Sallow and the Ray brothers? Selling drugs to Harry bloody Potter and feeling like it’s an achievement?
And since when does Leo want to talk? Draco could count the words they exchanged over the entire summer on his fingers. He would Apparate into the shop at dawn, withstand the day’s selection of humiliating remarks from Mr Borgin, then shut himself up in the cellar to fix broken artifacts, dark objects and tarnished hairlooms of old pureblood families while Leo brewed in the opposite corner. Once they heard the old man lock up and leave, they’d take off their goggles and aprons, have a beer and a smoke in silence, and then Draco would suck Leo off. He only knew Leo’s full name (Lionel) and last name (Burke) because of Mr Borgin’s shouting.
The grandnephew of the Burke who co-founded the shop, Leo is practically a Squib. He spends most of his time in the Muggle world. It’s from him that Draco has learned about lemon flavored butterbeer, and weed, and condoms, and television, and fish and chips, and pornography, and Piña colada, and computers, and AIDS, and Formula One, and science fiction, and sushi. But not through talk. Sometimes, Leo took Draco out to Muggle London, to fast-food restaurants and gay clubs where Draco could dance to Muggle techno music and suck Muggle cock. Other times, Leo brought Draco to his dingy little apartment with water-logged ceilings and cockroaches scurrying out of sight every time you turned on the light in the tiny, moldy bathroom, and they would get high and watch Star Trek and eat jam directly from the jar because there was nothing else.
Write. Draco burns the note. Leo might be the closest thing he’s had to a friend since sixth year, but he never wants to see him again.
He-Weasley’s always been broader than him, with massive shoulders and arms that look like weaponry. But now he’s grown taller, too. Draco’s stomach is churning. There’s a bit of fear in the mixture; he’s man enough to admit it, now. A bit of nauseating awe. A bit of excitement. And a whole lot of helpless, hopeless jealousy.
“Got anything stronger, mate?” says Weasley after they’ve made the exchange.
“Stronger than weed?”
“Yeah.” Weasley’s face scrunches in a way that Draco can’t quite read. “For Harry. We all get high as kites and he… I mean, it was pretty bad before, since Ginny and Luna—” he gestures awkwardly. “You know. But it’s even worse now.”
Draco has no idea what Weasley’s on about. Not that it matters. “I can get you some ecstasy. Acid too, maybe, though you might have to wait a few days for that. It’ll cost extra,” he adds, but judging by the vacant expression Weasley usually wears in classes, that has been way too much information already.
“Are those… potions?”
“Ah,” says Draco. “No one in your group has that kind of experience.”
Weasley shakes his head, making the scrunched face again.
“Tell you what,” says Draco. “Try a few more times with weed, then we’ll see.” The last thing he needs is an overdose scandal, or worse. He can just see the headlines. Savior on drugs! The boy who lived rushed to the hospital! Teenage Death Eater poisons Harry Potter: a disaster we could all see coming!
“Have you got that kind of experience?”
Draco blinks, startled. “No,” he says. It’s mostly true. Under Leo’s tutelage, he has tried pretty much everything short of injecting things directly into his bloodstream, but weed is the only thing he ever cared to try again.
Weasley’s face scrunches further. “D’you think it’d help if we got him drunk first?”
Draco barks out a surprised little laugh before he can stop himself. “How should I know? He’s your friend. Not mine.” And oh, how it stings, even after all these years.
“Yeah, but.” Weasley peers at him, his bright eyes suddenly sharp and crafty. “You two have a…” He gestures. “You know.”
It’s only when the churning in Draco’s stomach resumes that he realizes it had ceased. For a moment there, he felt almost comfortable, talking to Weasley. But now he feels like he’s on trial again. “A what?” What could he and Potter possibly have, apart from their sordid history? “A what?”
Weasley seems to draw breath for an answer, but then he deflates. “Never mind.”