Once, a very long time ago when Draco was small, he did sleep in the same room as others. Not that he remembers that now, of course. He was a baby then, and babies don't remember anything whatsoever of their early days. However, he does have on good authority that he must have slept in a nursery with his parents. Mother would never lie to him after all.

Not that an unremembered experience is any help now.

The covers over the bed across the room don't move that much. Yes, the twisted vines sewn through the cotton trees do shift, slithering down the trunks in an endless loop of movement across the quilt. But Draco can barely see that Theo's breathing under there as the covers rise and fall near imperceptibly.

This is the very first time Draco can actually remember someone else sleeping in the same room as him. What's he supposed to do now? Draco's awake, obviously, while Theodore isn't; and, while at Hogwarts the students are required to wake up at the same time due to their shared classes, there's no rules for what to do when it just you and someone else in a room together.

Well, there is a schedule here. Breakfast is always served at the same time at Malfoy Manor. So, Theodore should be awake by now so he doesn't miss it. Both him and Draco still have to change out of their sleepwear for Merlin's sake. They're going to be late if Draco doesn't wake Theo up right away.

The thick olive-green carpet squishes beneath Draco's toes as he treads softly to the sleeping boy. Theodore fails to stir when Draco leans over him. Which is expected, people don't just wake up if you stare at them.

When Draco places his hand where Theo's shoulder must be underneath the covers, the slithering vines slide against his palm, the faint warmth of their magic tickling his skin. Until a coolness slips in, pressing back.

The vines stop, frozen in place as Draco's hand prickles from the sudden change.

Theodore's sandy brown hair slides against the night-black pillowcase under him. His head turns a little and a startled, sharp blue eye focuses on Draco. It's like being pinned in his sheets after a night terror. Draco can't move, even if he wants to.

Theodore takes in a ragged breath as recognition floods into that one visible eye. The coolness slips away, the slight warmth of the quilt's enchantment rushing back in as the vines move under Draco's palm again.

"Your magic's cold." Draco states because it is. It's cold. He's never felt magic that cools instead of warms.

Theo shifts underneath the covers, drawing himself up until he's sitting on his pillow with the quilt only curled over the edges of his crossed legs. The dark smudges under Theodore's eyes are so pronounced it's as if he didn't sleep at all last night.

"You can feel it?" Theo asks almost too quietly for Draco to hear.

"Yes, of course I can. And it's cold. Why is it cold?" Draco leans forward, both palms pressed down on the shifting quilt as he stares at Theo. Theodore should know the answer to his question. It is the boy's own magic. Unless he doesn't sense it like Draco can.

Vincent and Gregory can't. And Pansy's certainly can't even when she claims to. She always guesses the temperatures wrong. More importantly, though, Mother and Father can't feel the varying warmth either. Although, they're quite proud that Draco can.

So, Theodore probably doesn't even know his magic feels cold. Which is terrible, because how is Draco going to find out why Theo's is different.

"It doesn't feel cold to me."

Draco frowns at that inconvenient answer. It's often quite nice that he's the only one that he knows who can sense what he can. Now, though, it's very annoying since Theodore can't help him—

"It's gritty, to me," Theodore says haltingly, "like sand. It feels like sand slipping out."

"Really?" The excitement raises Draco's voice. Theodore grimaces like he often does when Draco talks loudly. It's familiar, that grimace, appearing at every single playdate that Draco can recall.

Draco should be offended at that expression, yet he's not. It's familiar, unlike the look on Theodore's face yesterday.

"I meant, can you feel other magic?" Draco says more quietly. Maybe he did talk a bit loudly with how close they are to each other.

Theodore nods slowly, his blue eyes cutting down to the quilt. "The design on this quilt feels like its sliding." He reaches out a hand, placing it on the vines.

"How did you sleep then?" It's fine now, the slithering under Draco's palms. But there's no way he could handle the sensation through an entire night. From what Mother told him, his parents found that out the hard way when he was an infant. Kept them both up for nights with him while he fussed under a baby blanket with withering silk snakes embroidered along the edges.

The old blanket's stashed away in his closet now, a relic to remind Draco of when he first displayed magic as the Malfoy heir.

Theodore curls a little tighter in on himself. "I just did, I guess." He looks back up at Draco with those bright blue eyes. "I was too tired to stay awake."

"Well, I'll have to let Mother know to get you something else tonight. I doubt that you'll be tired enough to deal with that again." Draco taps his fingers against the quilt to emphasis his point.

"It feels like its sliding for me too, well, more like slithering since they are vines after all." Draco smiles at the better word choice. "I'd say the portraits feel more like sliding when they move. But we're not supposed to touch those. Father's orders." Although it was amusing when they used to try to swat at Draco's hand through the canvas. It's ridiculously funny since they should know better. Portraits can't reach into the real world, so they should realize that they'll never hit him.

"Father doesn't let me touch the portraits either," Theodore admits, "they stop moving and then he has to spend all day waking them up again."

"Oh, really," Draco crawls up onto the bed, sitting down near the foot end as he makes himself comfortable, "that must make them mad." The thought of the old Nott men bristling in outrage has him grinning.

Theodore shrugs silently.

"I've never made a portrait stop before." Draco pauses before bragging, "I've broken a few locks though."

*******

Narcissa lets her hand rest on the door handle a moment longer, her forehead pressed against the cool walnut wood. The boys' voices filter through. The louder words of her son pulls at her to stay, yet the quieter responses of Theodore has her stepping back and leaving the two children to their conversations.

The boys have never talked so friendly with each other before. Elenore would have been ecstatic to hear them.

The sting strikes the corners of Narcissa's eyes as she walks. She's alone. No witnesses like at the funeral, so she lets the excessive moisture in her eyes linger. Tears fail to fall.

That's not surprising. Even for the women from the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black who discard their last names for the sake of their husbands, tears are unwanted and unneeded. A sign of weakness, the inability to change the intolerable.

The intolerable. Death.

Narcissa scoffs, wiping the back of her hand against the unshed tears. To refer to death as intolerable sounds just like Aunt Walburga. Death isn't intolerable. It's suffocating, swallowing Narcissa up in a darkness so deep that she can't even stand the thought of breakfast with her family. A cherished part of her day soured into something that she's relieved Draco has an excuse not to attend.

It wouldn't do him any good if the conversation between Theodore and him lulls enough for Draco to remember that he's supposed to be dining with his parents. The talk Narcissa intends to have with Lucious isn't fit for her son to hear.

"Dobby." Her expression is unflinching as the house elf appears out of thin air at her call. The small creature stares at her with the overly large eyes of his kind as he awaits the rest of his orders. The spindliness of his limbs appear as brittle as she feels.

"Draco and our guest will be taking breakfast in bed. See to it that you get it to them while it's still warm." Her voice comes out steady and cold.

"Yes, Lady Malfoy, Dobby will get that right away." The elf tips his head in a bow before fading from view. As silent as house elves are at apparition, it's impossible to tell if the creature simply decided to become invisible as it walks the halls to the kitchen or if he's slipped away and truly left Narcissa alone.

It doesn't matter which way the creature travels, or at least it shouldn't, but if that house elf dawdles like he's prone to do, then Draco may very well make his way to the dining hall.

Narcissa bites the corner of her lip before continuing on her way through her home. If she were being more rational, she would put this conversation off until the evening when her child is asleep. When there is no risk of him overhearing anything too ghastly.

The patience to do so cracks, drying up as soon as she enters the dining hall. The morning sun streams through the windows, setting the silver chandeliers hanging from the ceiling alight even with their candles cold and dead. Her husband sits at the head of the long, black table. His hair a gleam in the morning light, his expression untroubled as he looks over the pages of the Daily Prophet.

The click of her heels on the stone tiles draws his attention. The look in his grey eyes as soft as any he's given her in these early mornings. It sharpens into something expectant as she settles into one of the high-backed chairs several spaces from his own.

"I suppose that we shouldn't be expecting the children this morning?" The cover of the morning paper is positively mundane, no declarations of murder marring its headlines, as it rests in Lucius's hands. His tone is wryly amused, no doubt expecting a continuation of the conversation from late last night where Mr. Nott was unfavorably compared to Narcissa's own useless father far too many times to count.

"Why isn't the Mudblood dead?" She hears Bella in that moment, even though those words came out of her own mouth. That tone, the way it demands that blood be shed now and not later...Even in Narcissa's dreams, it's been so long since she's heard even a whisper of her older sister.

Lucius stares at her in shock. No doubt hearing the ghost of Bella as well. He shouldn't be shocked, not really. Not after referring to Elenore's son. That boy will grow up motherless all because of some Mudblood's mistake with a simple potion.

Elenore's heart was always weak, yes. And it's doubtful that she ever would have enjoyed the day her own grandchildren graduated from Hogwarts even if she had been fortunate enough to watch Theodore marry some girl. But she would have been there to see her child grow up. The Wyvern's Heart potion Elenore drank diligently would have run through her veins and kept her frail heart beating at least for that long.

Instead, she boiled alive from the inside out because some potioneer's Mudblood apprentice added a few too many drops of dragon blood to the mixture.

"Narcissa..." Lucius looks as if he wants nothing more than to reach to grasp her far away hand clenched on the table. "The boy is already set to stand trial before the Wizengamot. I highly doubt someone of his...lineage will survive long under a life sentence in Azkaban."

He tries to smile at her, to comfort her with a false promise of inadequate retribution.

"You truly believe that our esteemed Chief Warlock will allow that." Narcissa keeps Dumbledore's name out of the open. His title alone is enough to cause Lucius's expression to sour. "A decade, love, you'll be lucky to get a decade. And even a person of the boy's lineage can survive that long."

It's left unsaid, hanging in the air like the Dark Mark would have been ten years before, that there was a time the apprentice wouldn't have even lasted until Elenore's funeral before he burned in his own home like she did.

Bellatrix would have invited her along. Encouraged her dear Cissy to set the fires herself as the hatred burned through her veins and rushed right out her wand. The enchanted metal of a borrowed Death Eater's mask would have pressed against her face as coldly as the years now stretch out before her.

Her sisters are lost to her and her best friend is now dead. Narcissa may have her husband and son, dearer and more precious to her than anything under the stars, but who else does she have? How many loved ones are truly left?

Her husband gets up, slides his hands over her shoulders as soon as he's close, and kisses the top of her head while tears burn at the corners of her eyes.

"I'm sorry." He says at either his inability to avenge one of their kind or at all Narcissa's lost as she bites back every bitter curse that wants to tear out of her. Instead of breaking apart, she reaches up her hands and clutches tightly to his.

"I'm sorry."