Draco Malfoy x Harry Potter
Draco is eleven, when the first letter arrives.
And it's a letter, a legacy, a livid, ensuing argument between his parents all in an embossed green stamp.
Draco isn't quite sure who wins, at the end of it all.
Only knows that his mother is taking his robes to be lined with fur and his father is teaching him to sharpen down his vowels, make them grate against his tongue like gravel, till he knows how to say precisely five words in a sloppily accented Russian.
Durmstrang, the letter had said.
And Draco had thought of double edged swords, the skin on his knuckles torn open and cauterizing a wound beneath an open flame. He'd thought of matchsticks and he'd thought of flint and -
None of it, none of it, could have prepared him for what was to come.
Draco is fourteen, when his English becomes important enough for him to use, again.
And the words trip over his teeth as he mumbles them under his breath, Scotland bursting like a tree in bloom into view.
It's greener than he remembers.
With a bruise bitten, drooling, sky.
"You almost went here, didn't you?" Viktor asks, eyebrows drawn together as he traces his fingers over the fogged up window pane. "To Hogwarts?"
Draco tips his chin in a knee-jerk nod.
He can see, too far in the distance, aged brick and twisting towers, the soggy-wooden stands of what must be a Qudditch pitch.
"Do you ever wonder what it might've been like, if you'd gone there instead?"
Different, from what Draco had expected. Is an amalgam of moth-bitten tapestries kissing crumbling brick walls and lamps flickering with a whiskey warm light; it's a Great Hall swarming with eyes, that sting like bees against the back of Draco's neck, and a set of irises that are green, green, green
Hogwarts is Harry Potter.
Unexpected. Unexpected. A fairy tale remnant of what Draco's life once might've been, isn't now; he's a sunset pink mouth and ungodly black hair, a pair of glasses that have been hastily taped together.
Entranced. Entranced. He's enchanted and esnared and can't quit looking at this boy with the emerald fucking eyes.
"Who is that?" Viktor asks.
It's his competition, as it turns out.
No one really knows how it happens.
But Harry Potter's name is pulled from the Goblet of Fire in a torrent of flames; sloping, sloppy handwriting that gives the distinct impression that it's running away.
It's a shock, to say the least.
Because Harry Potter is a fourth year, shouldn't have been able to cross the age-line, because it doesn't quite make sense.
"There are a lot of things about that boy," Viktor points out, "that don't make sense."
And Draco can't help but agree.
He doesn't meet Harry Potter until they've been there for precisely three weeks.
It's a bitter cold morning - the kind that comes when summers been shot and is bleeding into fall, with trees dragging their fingers through a gray, gray sky - when Draco decides to take advantage of the Quidditch pitch.
Russian dirt is still smudged across the toe of Draco's boot.
But he's in Ireland, now, fresh air tying ribbons in his lungs as he sets foot on sprawling green, sees a boy already kicking off the turf.
And it's Harry, of course. With wind wrecked hair and dirt flecked across his pink tinged cheeks.
He doesn't notice Draco, at first.
Is far too busy with the broom in his hand and the wind in his eyes and he hasn't noticed Draco, no, but Draco has noticed him.
It's simply been a matter of waiting for him to catch up.
His eyes collide with Draco's when he hits the ground. And there's a perverse sort of tension wound through the motion that Draco thinks he recognizes, thinks is a knee-jerk reaction in himself.
"You're one of the Durmstrang boys, aren't you?" Harry asks, almost anxiously. His grip around the neck of his broom tightens.
"Yes," Draco replies. Then - "I'm Malfoy. Draco Malfoy."
And it feels like a terribly important moment, just then, like something he'll look back on with the hindsight sharp knowledge that he was sealing a fate.
Harry glances from his eyes to his palm.
