A first line fic for Sandy the Older

It wasn't that kind of bar but that was where it happened anyway. That was where Malfoy slammed down two tumblers of whiskey--the Muggle kind, which didn't burn your throat like Firewhiskey did, but which left you a hell of a lot more hungover come morning. That was where he wiped his mouth--you remember that well, the quick swipe of his hand across chapped lips; you remember thinking his lips were as pale as the rest of him--and told you, "Mind your fucking business, Potter," and when he raised a finger, the bartender refilled both glasses. Neither of them was for you.

Malfoy looked old, there, in tattered jeans and a black t-shirt. His hair was spiked all over the place, and he'd picked up a metal bead necklace, and had chipped black fingernails, and you remembering thinking that was what Muggle teenagers must look like, the normal ones who weren't 80 stone overweight. But he looked old, tired, and filled to the brim with the kind of anger you hadn't felt since his aunt killed your godfather.

That was where you realized the tides were reversed, because you, you had everything a wizard could want, and Malfoy looked like a street punk and if he still had magic you knew he didn't remember how to use it, and yet you envied him.

"The Muggles call him Dragon," Kingsley had said, handing you the file in your office--you had an office, at your age, a full office in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, with a window that looked out on the little Muggles scurrying around on the streets below. You hadn't realized there was room in the building for this many stories when you first arrived, but of course there was, you had magic. Kingsley said, "Find out what he's up to."

It took you two weeks to get close to him after that, not because you couldn't--you could've obliviated every bodyguard and attache in sight, you could've forced your way to his door, through the security systems that kept out teenaged girls and hate-filled boys, and no one, at least, no one who mattered, would blink twice. But you wanted to watch him first, to learn his patterns, to see for yourself before you slammed him against a wall, wand to his throat, and arrested him. Because he was doing Dark Magic, of course he was, he was bloody Draco Malfoy, and you were Harry Potter which meant you'd win.

Two weeks, and in all that time not a hint of magic, not so much as a lumos, about his entire estate. Dragon Preserve, he'd called it, in what must have been a final fuck you to wizardkind. You watched, with your extendable eyes, and you listened, with extendable ears, and in all that time he played angry songs with his band and drank on his porch and on Tuesdays he went to the Muggle pub and ordered whiskey, and if he could sense your presence behind the invisibility cloak he never gave it away.

Until the third Tuesday, when he slammed down his drinks and cursed at you, and the curses were not the kind that glittered in the air.

"Who's the other drink for?" you asked, because whatever Malfoy'd become, you still had a job to do.

Malfoy laughed--not the cruel laughter of your childhood, of Hogwarts, but a harsh sort of giggle, the sound you imagined Sirius must have made, once upon a time. "Elijah," he said.

You told Kingsley, later, that he was off his rocker, "but no harm, 's far as I can see, to Muggles or wizards."

"Malfoy?" Kingsley said, and you nodded.

You told Hermione what he'd said, because if Hermione didn't know what it was about, she'd look it up, but in the end it was Luna who told you.

"Elijah will return one day, and after him comes the Messiah, bringing Judgement Day."

Isn't that like Malfoy, you thought, to just sit and *wait* for the Apocalypse instead of *doing* something--but you searched through your scar for a frission of energy on the other side, just in case.

As always, there was nothing.