Set Fire to Rain

Draco

When I was younger, I knew three things. I knew that my mother was the most wonderful person in the world, beautiful and loving, the best thing I could ever ask for. I knew that I could do things other children couldn’t; I could do magic. And I knew to never get in my fathers way, for my father said he loved me, but it was not in the way that my mother did. No, it was never anything near to that.

When I was little, I remember my mother bringing home another child. I was in the kitchen standing on a chair, trying to reach the cookies I wanted because I didn’t know how to summon the house elves yet. My mother walked into the kitchen, her blue eyes sparkling with happiness as she gently held a little girls hand. I remember frowning at the little girl because I had never seen her before.

She had dark black hair, only to her shoulders and blue eyes that were large and very pretty. My mother always told me I had the prettiest eyes, but it seemed as if I were in for some competition. She looked scared and unsteady on her feet. I had just turned two, but she looked about the same age as I did.

“Draco, sweetie, I want you to meet someone who will be staying with us,” my mother told me, beckoning to get down from the chair. I got down slowly, unsure. I didn’t like meeting knew people, but if my mother told me to come to her I did.
Mother was bent down now next to the little girl, smiling at her and then smiling at me. I was still frowning, and I knew I was because she gave me that look that told me to stop frowning. I didn’t.
“Draco, this is Regan. Reagan, this is Draco.”
“Hi,” she said quietly, voice like helium. She blinked those big blues eyes at me.
“Why is she staying with us?” I demanded my mother. I was not going to share my mother. She was mine.
Mother frowned and scolded me, “Draco where are your manners.”
“Sorry, Mother. It is nice to meet you- Reagan.”
The little girl nodded but said nothing.

*

Reagan Potter grew to be my best friend. When I was old enough, I was told never to tell anyone who she was, and that she existed. I thought I would be easy at first, to be best friends with her. But it wasn’t. She couldn’t go to Hogwarts with me, so I had to make new friends there. I couldn’t tell them how much fun we would have, or how I used to beat her in quidditch, or how sometimes she would beat me too. When I was asked about friends at home, I had to say I didn’t have any.

I always thought it was hard, being at a home away from home without Reagan. She was a part of me somehow, that I didn’t quite always understand. She was someone that I confided in, because she never told me how I should deal with something. She was a listener, and only gave her opinion when it needed to be said. She was brutally honest, and did not spare my feelings when they did not need to be spared. She was everything I needed in a friend, but nothing that my father liked to have in his house.

Father always made a point of telling me to make good friends at Hogwarts, good pureblood friends that didn’t have mudbloods or half-bloods in their family. When I would point out the Reagan is my best friend and a half-blood, he would simply get this disgusted look on his face and mumble that she was different and he didn’t know ‘what the bloody hell she was doing in our care’. But that was the way it was, purebloods weren’t supposed to like others that weren’t pureblood. Regan was just the exception.

Reagan was the exception for everything I had ever known in my entire life.
She was the exception that I told her everything- I did not tell my friends at school things. They didn’t deserve to know, and it was none of their business. But Reagan, she could know. I wasn’t nice to the other kids in school because they didn’t deserve it. They weren’t as good as me. But Regan, I was nice to her. I only liked purebloods in school. But Reagan, I liked her. I hated Harry Potter more than anything in this world, because we were born to hate one another. But I didn’t hate his sister. No, I didn’t hate Regan Potter.
*

I have only been terrified in my life once. So terrified that it goes down to the bone, where as much as you tense up your muscles, they won’t stop quivering like jello. It was that kind of terrified, where your so scared because it’s not for yourself, it’s because it’s for someone else, and you’re just sure that any minute you’ll hear the news, and any minute the agony will wash over you in a giant wave, and that you will cry for nights and nights, because that person that you were scared for, was dead.

I have only been that scared once, and it was the summer before my 6th year at Hogwarts. I had just gotten my dark mark. It was a painful process, but not unbearable. To get my dark mark, I had to torture a man for information. I tortured him. And I got that information. I had a lot to prove to the Dark Lord, but not as much as Reagan. No, she had Potter in her veins.

Reagan was sent out alone one night. I didn’t know what she had to do, none of us did. I waited up in my room all night, sitting by the window, the silver light of the moon shining in silver ribbons through my window. I waited for hours, just hoping to see her silhouette in the darkness as she arrived. I waited in fear that she would never return.

But then she came, a dark shape barely seen moving down the street in the dark, like a phantom come back for revenge. She melted in and out of shadows, and it was hard to fallow where she walked. The way she moved was eerie and gave me chills, but the relief that welled up in my heart came out as a long sigh, frosting the window because my nose was pressed up against it, as if I could just fall through and go down to her.

I walked quickly out into the hallway when I heard her light steps coming up the stairs. I had every intention of asking her what she had to do, was she okay, and if she needed anything. When I opened my door, she was just beginning to slip inside her bedroom from across the hall, but she stopped looking up at me. Her faced was hooded, but the silver light that shone through my window caressed her face. I could only see half of her face, for the other half was hidden behind the door, but the look on her face made me want to never ask what she did. There was a mask of coldness, a mask of ghostly terror, there on her face, where the moonlight hit. Her eyes were a dark ominous blue, and they held something dark and sinister, like a monster lurking at the bottom of the Black Lake. She looked at me with those eyes, and that pale face, and shut the door without moving, without saying a word.

I never asked what Reagan did that night. Not after the look had passed, not after she got her mark. Every time I thought of the question, she would look at me, and I remember her eyes, her face, and the question ran from my thought like a bat out of Hell.

*

Saturdays were the one days I was allowed to sleep in. All other days, were strictly death eater business. I enjoyed my Saturdays, because at night I often could not sleep. Insomnia plagued me late at night, when I lay alone in that dark house. I willed sleep to come, but it rarely did, and when it did I was poisoned with nightmares I could never remember.

Saturday mornings, when the grey touched the sky, is when I could begin to sleep. It was because I knew I had gotten through another night alive, and not been killed in my sleep, and that as long as the sun was up and shining, I could close my eyes and rest for that Saturday that I did not have to do anything.

It was one of those Saturdays, when there was a constant noise down stairs. There is never noise in the house on Saturdays, because on those days it was only myself, my mother, and Reagan. My father was no longer there of course, being imprisoned in Azkaban, but the Dark Lord and Aunt Bella were never there on Saturday’s. I never asked what they did, whether because I was to scared to know, or whether I didn’t want to be killed for asking, were about the same thing.

So for noise to be happening on that morning, ruining my sleep, did not make any sense. My mother was a quiet woman, so the only option was that Reagan was doing something. But Regan needed her sleep on those days too. I heard her screams at night. I heard the sudden gasps of fear and the sudden silence upon her waking up.

I got out of my bed, walking out of the room in just a t-shirt and pajama bottoms. I walked down the stairs, and finally to the room that we used to practice spells in. I paused outside the door, and I could hear Reagan yelling a spell that I didn’t know. Then I heard a scream and a loud bang.

Walking into the room I saw an explosion of fire and a raging Reagan, staring at the fire as if she could make it grow and combust with just her eyes. I put out the fire, causing her to whirl around and face me. Upon the realization it was me, the rage cleared from her eyes. she was dressed simply, but something about how she looked that way was different. She was beautiful, I had always seen that. But not like this.

She turned away from me, staring at the scorch marks on the floor as I approached her. I stood very close to her, closer than I had ever dared in a moment like this before. The nearness felt different, and I wanted to reach out and brush my hand over her hair. I knew it would be soft as silk, but I wanted to see for myself.
“What’s wrong?” I breathed, not wanting her upset.
She turned to face me, eyes and face angry. “I can’t get this bloody spell right! I’ve never had a problem with a spell- ever.”

Regan suddenly walked away from me, throwing her wand as hard as she could at the wall. I frowned. That was a good wand she had, made of strong and sturdy aspen, and the core was Phoenix, which was the rarest core in the world. Phoenix cored wands rarely ever picked owners, and it was by chance that Gregorgovitch even had one. My entire family has had their wands from Olivander’s, but Reagan was an unusual case. The Bulgarian wand maker would not care who she was, or care to learn who she was. All he knew what that he would find a wand for her.

Seeing the damage Reagan could do with a wand was sometimes terrifying. Sometimes it seemed as if some sort of darkness washed over her and she had to destroy everything in her anger. Once upon a time, I had dreamed me and Reagan could escape the darkness we were in, and live free of the Dark Lord. But Reagan was very much a death eater, she was very much cruel, and dangerous.

“A spell?” I asked her, incredulous. “You can’t let a spell get you that upset ray, no offense but that’s mental. You’re not going to be able to do and understand every spell in the world. What was it anyways?”
“A patronus charm.”
“We can’t cast those,” I said as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.”
“What do you mean, ‘we’?”
“We’ as in death eaters, and because patronus charms are the very embodiment that is meant to fight off everything we are, all the things we are made of. Why would we attempt to produce a charm that wards against ourselves.”
“I had a theory I wanted to test. I can change many things, if this theory is so… but I cannot do it without a patronus.”
I thought about it. “Then maybe you should think of something that it would prosper from, something… good, pure. You’ve seen a lot of darkness, and so have I, so it’s going to be difficult, but I’m sure you can come up with some sort of image in your head that is light and good-hearted enough”
She shook her heard no, being stubborn as always. “But it has to be a memory.”
I smirked at her then and asked, “Says who?”

I then walked over and picked up her wand, handing it to her and looking at her encouragingly. But I myself doubt that she could produce a patronus. None of us could, it was something that just didn’t exist in death eaters. I always faintly wondered if I could though… I had memories… memories that weren’t evil.

I watched as she closed her eyes and thought about things. She frowned for a moment and I could see the screws working in her head. She was beautiful even when she was thinking to herself. She nodded to herself before opening her eyes and lifting her wand, set on an image. She twirled it and said strongly, “Expecto Patronum.”

Silver danced out of the tip of her wand, reminding me of those moonlight ribbons so long ago. But her face didn’t look that way- no it looked as if she were mystified and something so happy had welled up inside her. an animal took place and I saw that before her a beautiful, silver dragon took form. She had created a full bodied patronus. A real one, with light, and without malic and hate. It was in that moment that I knew I could save her from darkness. I could save this girl, if only I could figure out how to get myself out first. If I could rescue her, I would do it.

I realized then, that I wanted to save her, because I was in love with her.