#fantalf

When he was little, he would rise before the sun, tip-toe quietly through the halls of the Manor, and slither through a crack in the kitchen’s back door into the cool, misty morning.

He relished the shock of the icy dew on his bare toes and ankles as he leapt about, waving a twig like a wand and imagining that the tendrils of swirling fog were traces of spells he cast across the warming fields of Wiltshire. He dueled spectres in the vapor rising from the damp grass, vanquished foes that lurked behind bushes and trees, and bowed before kings and queens grateful for his valiant service to their empires.

Inevitably, he would battle his way across the back field to the stables. The Malfoy family was renowned among Pureblood society for their champion racing thestrals. His father forbade him from going near the foals every spring, lest he spoil their carefully monitored diet with too many sugar cubes, or tempt fate with an unsupervised gallop through the woods. His father needn’t have bothered, however, since between the hours of eight and six o’clock the stables buzzed with activity--veterinarians weaving webs of glowing diagnostic spells, farriers nailing magically-enhanced shoes into filed-down hooves, trainers and jockeys putting each thestral through rigorous exercise regimens, stable hands mucking out stalls and levitating in fresh bales of hay. There was no room for him then.

But before eight o’clock, the stables belonged only to Draco. He would hike up the legs of his silk pajama pants and clamber through the small window in the tack room that no one seemed to remember to close.

His favorite thestral was called Vincet--He Will Conquer--but Draco’s five-year-old brain heard Vincent--They Will Conquer. He’d always assumed that included him--he and Vincent, together, on a quest to banish evil from the realm.

Draco loved Vincent for many reasons, not least because he was there the day that Vincent was born. The chaos of foaling season meant Draco could slip through the stables virtually undetected as the racing team staff, his father, and their wealthy patrons were otherwise preoccupied. He watched--wide eyed and slack jawed--from behind a mound of hay as the vet murmured charms and wove a magical barrier around the mare’s hind quarters, reaching out a gloved hand to ease the baby into the world with a wet-sucking splatter. Vincent looked right at him, with his fresh, milky eyes, as his spindly legs and wet-paper wings flapped and flailed about.

Every daybreak thereafter found Sir Draco tending diligently to his steed--his own mount--as the newborn colt found its wings and learned to fly. They grew together, both becoming taller and stronger, each praised and celebrated for their good breeding and superior talent.

The two years after Vincent’s birth are the happiest in Draco’s memory. His father noticed his particular attachment to the young thestral and, instead of shooing Draco away like always, used the opportunity to indoctrinate him into the family business. He was put in charge of Vincent’s care, and, as soon as enough time had passed, his early training.

They shared a special bond, Draco was sure of it. Vincent was always waiting for him, with his skeletal snout thrust over the gate of his stall, wide-open nostrils flaring as they searched for Draco’s scent in the air. Draco had never needed a lead when working with Vincent, the thestral followed him instinctively and never wandered. He was the only person who could mount Vincent without being playfully bucked off. They spent hours and hours in the sky above the Manor, Draco telling Vincent all about the imaginary little fiefdoms and friaries that comprised their kingdom.

Then, one day, Vincent was gone.

“But, dad, he’s my thestral--”

“No, Draco, he is my asset. He’s a prize stallion, a favorite to win the Triple Charm. I’ve allowed him to run wild with you for far too long; he needs to be broken in properly before his debut. Besides, we’ll make far more money from his covers than we ever would letting him languish here getting fat and old.”

“But--”

“No buts, Draco! We have all, you included, paid too high a price to let our vigilance falter. I shouldn’t have to remind you, my son, this is a business that we’re running, not your personal petting zoo. Don’t make me think twice about leaving you in charge of it all one day.”

So, Draco swallowed his heartbreak and devoted himself to the care and breeding of the Malfoy flock. He learned everything he could about the great Thoroughbred lines, memorized all the past champions and the names of their jockeys, accompanied his father on meetings with all the other breeders around Great Britain, and even began his certification as a race-thestral trainer. He was determined to know and dominate the industry from the inside out by his seventeenth birthday. To make his father proud.

The summer before his fifth year of school his father even sent him away to apprentice at the number one stable in all of Europe, famous for producing the most international champions in the world. Draco learned two very important lessons that summer, lessons that would change the way he viewed the world, his father, and himself.

First, he learned that the world of race-thestrals is saturated by violence and driven by greed. In his childhood naivete, he assumed his father and his colleagues loved thestrals the way he loved them, that they bred them and raced them because they are magnificent, clever beings whose quiet power is unmatched by any other magical creature. He only had to spend one evening tending to the wounds inflicted as punishment on a young, high spirited colt to realize the people running the industry don’t care for the animals, not at all. They only care about their profits.

Second, and most shocking, he learned that most people can’t see thestrals. It had never occurred to him to think otherwise, since every stable hand, every breeder and potential buyer, every jockey and trainer, even his mother and father, could all see them.

“How’d you get it, then?” one of the stable hands asked Draco one evening as they made the rounds, ensuring each tiny stall gate was closed and locked tight.

“Get what?”

“The sight--what happened, so you can see them?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Draco replied, dismissively, turning to leave the stable and the conversation. He had tried very hard not to make friends, intent on absorbing all he could to take home to his father.

“I mean,” the stable hand insisted, “who’d you see...you know…” he dragged his thumb lewdly across his throat, his tongue flopping out of his mouth around a wet, gagging noise.

Draco stared blankly, still uncomprehending.

“For me, it was me dad. Owed the family--” he gestured up toward the large mansion on the property “--loads of money. AKd him right ‘ere,” he pressed the pad of one finger right between Draco’s eyebrows. “Right in front of me and me mum. S’why I’m here, workin’ off the debt ‘n all. So, who was it for you? Dad? Mum? A cousin, maybe?”

“I’m afraid I - I don’t have any idea--” Draco began, deeply unsettled and intent on ending the strange encounter once and for all. He didn’t even finish his sentence before hurrying clumsily into the dark.

That night, after the rest of the house was asleep, he crept into the mansion’s library. Never in his life, not even in his first set of race-thestral training courses, had he ever actually picked up a book and read about them. He trusted what his father taught him, what his father’s trainers taught him. He trusted what he saw with his own two eyes, every day, in the Malfoy stables.

The only people who can see a thestral, are those who have witnessed--first hand--the death of another.

Only, Draco hadn’t seen anyone die. Had he? Wouldn’t he remember something like that?

He couldn’t recall--

Had no memory of--

“For Salazar’s sake, Draco,” his father hissed through the library’s Floo connection, angry at having been awoken in the small hours of the night, and angrier still at being pelted with stupid questions, “Don’t be such a child. How else were you to take over the family business? It’s common practice, all the old families do it on a child’s first birthday. It’s something to be proud of! You are special, Draco! You can see what others can’t! It’s part of your birthright as a Malfoy!”

He cried himself to sleep every night until he left Denmark.

*

Despite all the pain, terror, and tragedy that swallowed everything after that fateful summer, he can’t help but be grateful now that the family business went to shit as a result.

He’s doubly, triply, grateful that Hermione Granger accepted his apology and agreed to publicly support his initiative to lobby the Wizengamot to formally ban thestral racing.

He still isn’t over his profound shock that she left her cushy government position to help him build and run a rehabilitation facility for retired race-thestrals. He knows his work won’t bring Vincent back, but every new thestral brought to the preserve, every sweet old broodmare allowed to finally find some peace and quiet, every new foal welcomed to their flock is a testament to his best friend.

Draco Malfoy has always been a morning person.

And so, the golden light of this very early Spring morning finds him sprawled, legs akimbo, white linen shirt halfway unbuttoned, and suspenders loose around his hips, lounging on the floor of one of the birthing stalls. His sketchbook is open flat on his lap, and his fingers are black and powdery from the charcoal nub clasped gently between his thumb and forefinger.

A new baby was born during the night, and Draco hurried over as soon as the sun peeked over the ridge around the preserve to make a portrait.

“I think I’ll call you Pax,” he whispers as he sketches, delighted by the foal’s high-pitched chirps, “it means--”

“Peace,” a deep voice rumbles softly from his left. Harry lifts a hand to fist at his tired eyes and yawns deeply. He leans forward on his sweater-clad elbows, which rest atop the stall gate, to peer over at Draco’s sketchpad.

“Potter,” Draco says, aiming for casual and landing somewhere near nauseous. He snaps his sketchbook shut firmly, cursing silently at the smudged, black mess he’s sure to find when he reopens it later. A small price to pay to keep Harry from laying eyes on his other doodles, full of silly, round glasses, sharp, lightning-bolt shaped scars, and deeply-dimpled smiles.

Harry straightens and pushes a hand through his morning-messy curls, stifling another big yawn behind his palm. Draco’s heart clenches.

The day they had officially opened the preserve was the best day of Draco’s life. The day after they had officially opened the preserve--the day that Harry Potter had turned up, claiming to have quit his basically-new job with the Aurors to lend a hand--was the worst day of Draco’s life.

Because now, Draco’s mornings and evenings, his days and his nights, are full of Harry.

Harry--his childhood rival.

Harry--the Boy Who Lived Twice.

Harry--his soulmate.

If only Draco were Harry’s soulmate, too.

Choose:

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