—[
The Great Hall reeked of roasted pumpkin and childish happiness.
Thousands of candles floated inside hollowed-out pumpkins, casting dancing shadows over the four long tables. Live bats fluttered in the enchanted ceiling, screeching at a frequency Draco found irritating, but which the rest of the school found festive.
Draco sat in his usual spot, at the center of the Slytherin table, surrounded by his court. However, his attention was not on the feast of ribs and treacle tarts that had appeared on the golden plates.
His attention was split on two fronts.
First: The Empty Seat at Gryffindor.
Draco glanced sideways at the lions' table. Potter and Weasley were stuffing themselves with sweets, laughing. But Hermione Granger was missing.
Perfect, Draco thought, taking a sip from his goblet of ice water. The script is holding. Weasley insulted her in Charms ("She's a nightmare, she has no friends"). She is crying in the second-floor girls' bathroom. The stage is set.
Second: Pansy Parkinson.
Since the vassalage ritual, Pansy had become... voracious. Seated to his right, she had dragged her chair until her thighs touched his.
"Draco..." she whispered, her voice a trembling thread. "I feel... cold."
It wasn't thermal cold. It was magical withdrawal. Her core, forcibly expanded by Draco's magic, now demanded that dark energy constantly.
Draco didn't look at her. He kept his gaze forward, conversing casually with Blaise Zabini about the incompetence of the Quidditch team.
"Higgs can't distinguish a Quaffle from his own head, Blaise. We need to renew the Chasers next year."
While speaking with aristocratic coldness, Draco slipped his left hand under the table.
Pansy let out a hitched breath when Draco's long, cold fingers settled on her knee covered in black silk stockings.
He didn't caress. He squeezed.
His fingers slid slowly upward, climbing the inner curve of her thigh. Pansy tensed, her hands clutching the tablecloth, knuckles white.
"Behave, Pansy," Draco murmured, not looking away from Blaise. "You are vibrating. It is unseemly."
"I... I'm sorry..." she whimpered, biting her lower lip.
Draco channeled a small discharge of magic through his fingers. It wasn't much, just a spark of his residual power. For Pansy, it was as if she had been injected with liquid caffeine directly into her spine. Her eyes dilated, black and glassy, and she pushed her crotch against his hand, seeking more contact, more power.
Draco smiled faintly, cruelly, stopping his hand halfway, denying her total satisfaction. He kept her on the edge, controlling her breathing and her sanity with a single touch under the table while maintaining the mask of the perfect prince above it.
Suddenly, the doors of the Great Hall banged open with a thunderous crash.
Professor Quirrell came running in. His turban was undone, his pale face shining with fake sweat.
"Troll!" he shouted, his voice shattering the festive atmosphere. "Troll in the dungeons!" He stumbled toward the High Table. "Just... thought you ought to know."
Quirrell fainted theatrically in front of Dumbledore.
Chaos erupted.
Screams. Students scrambling to their feet. The sound of benches scraping against stone.
"SILENCE!" Dumbledore's voice thundered, amplified by sonomancy.
As the prefects began to organize the evacuation toward the dormitories, Draco withdrew his hand from Pansy's leg. She let out a moan of protest, almost painful.
Draco stood up, smoothing his immaculate robes.
Showtime.
"Listen well, Pansy," Draco said, leaning toward her. His tone was no longer playful; it was a military command. "I am not going to the dungeons."
"What?" Pansy blinked, emerging from her magic-induced haze. "But the prefects... it's dangerous..."
"The Troll isn't in the dungeons, you idiot. It is a distraction," Draco cut her off. "I am going to secure an asset that the Gryffindor idiots have left forgotten."
He grabbed her chin, forcing her to look him in the eye.
"You take the first-years to the Common Room. Secure the perimeter. Do not let anyone out. If Nott asks, tell them I went to verify the external wards. Understood?"
Pansy, feeling the authority of the Bond vibrating in her chest, nodded mechanically.
"Yes, Draco. Be careful... please."
"Fear is for the prey, Pansy," he said, releasing her.
While the tide of Slytherin students headed toward the dungeons (ironically, toward where the danger was supposed to be), Draco slipped away in the opposite direction, using the confusion to blend into the shadows of a side service door.
He knew exactly where to go.
Girls' bathroom. Second floor.
The investment named Hermione Granger was about to receive a lesson on reality that no book could teach her.
—[
The stone corridors of the second floor were plunged in a spectral gloom. Torches flickered, casting elongated shadows that seemed to flee from something crawling in the dark.
Draco didn't run. Running was for those afraid of being late or for those fleeing. He advanced with long, silent strides, muffled by a Silencing Charm applied to the soles of his dragon-hide boots.
He didn't need to search. He knew exactly where the girls' bathroom was. He remembered the canon location with the same clarity he remembered potion formulas.
However, the System insisted on providing tactical data, overlaying an augmented reality interface onto his night vision.
[THREAT SCAN: ACTIVE][Target: Mountain Troll (Adult/Disoriented).][Location: 50 meters North. Static.][Scent Detected: Rancid musk, Feces, Old blood.]
Draco wrinkled his nose with aristocratic disgust. The stench was physical, an invisible wall of rot hitting him long before he saw the creature.
"Barbarian," he muttered, drawing his ebony wand. The black wood warmed in his hand, vibrating with lethal anticipation.
Turning the corner into the main corridor, Draco stopped, melting into the shadows of a medieval suit of armor.
Two figures were running down the hall, making as much noise as a herd of panicked centaurs.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley.
They were panting, robes disheveled, skidding on the stone floor.
"It's that way!" Weasley shouted, pointing to the bathroom door at the end of the hall. "I can smell it!"
Draco watched them with clinical coldness. Gryffindors. They have the subtlety of a brick and the survival instinct of a lemming.
He watched as they stopped in front of the bathroom door. Weasley hesitated, wand shaking in his hand. Potter, driven by that heroic stupidity Dumbledore cultivated so carefully, pushed the door open and both entered.
[SYSTEM ALERT: CHAOS VARIABLE][Situation Analysis:]
Subject 1 (Hermione): Cornered. Combat Level: 0.
Subjects 2 & 3 (Harry/Ron): Entering combat zone. Combat Level: Incompetent.
Probability of Collateral Damage to "Investment": 88%.
Draco clicked his tongue.
"If I let them try to save her, half the bathroom will end up collapsing on top of her," he whispered to himself. "And I need her brain intact."
A high-pitched, terrifying scream tore the air from inside the bathroom. It was the sound of the absolute realization of imminent death.
It was followed by the crash of shattering porcelain and the guttural roar of the beast.
Draco abandoned the shadows.
He was no longer walking slowly. He moved with fluid speed, his cloak billowing behind him like black smoke.
He reached the bathroom door. He didn't open it with his hand.
He launched a sharp kick, reinforced with magic, right below the lock.
The door flew open, crashing against the inner wall with a bang.
The scene was a tableau of primitive destruction.
The Troll occupied almost all the vertical space. It was a twelve-foot mountain of greyish skin, full of warts and scars. Its long, misshapen arms dragged a splintered wooden club that looked like it had been torn from a centuries-old tree.
The sink pipes had been ripped out. Water sprayed under pressure, creating a cold mist that mixed with the dust of debris. The floor was flooded, turning the white tiles into a treacherous skating rink.
In the farthest corner, under the remains of a smashed sink, was Hermione Granger.
She was curled up, arms over her head, shaking violently. Her wand lay a meter away, useless.
Harry Potter was doing something incredibly stupid: he was throwing pieces of tap at the Troll's head to distract it.
"Hey! Pea-brain!" Harry shouted.
Ron Weasley was pale, waving his wand from the doorway.
"Wingardium...! Wingard... ahhh!"
The Troll, annoyed by the noise, turned its massive body. Its club swung, smashing three toilet cubicles in an explosion of wood and ceramic. Harry had to dive to the floor to avoid being decapitated.
The beast fixed its small, cruel eyes on Hermione again. It raised the club with both hands, preparing to crush her like an insect.
"NO!" Hermione screamed, squeezing her eyes shut.
The club began to descend.
"Diffindo."
The word wasn't shouted. It was spoken with an icy, cutting clarity that pierced through the noise of the water and the screams.
An arc of dark violet light, thin as a razor wire, shot from the bathroom entrance.
It wasn't aimed at the club.
It was aimed at anatomy.
Draco's spell impacted the back of the Troll's right knee.
SHHH-LACK.
The sound was sickening. Wet. Like cutting raw meat with a heavy axe.
The beast's Achilles tendon snapped. The massive leg gave way instantly under the monster's weight.
The Troll roared, a sound of confusion and agonizing pain, and collapsed to the right. The club hit the floor inches from Hermione's head, cracking the tiles but missing its target.
The beast tried to stand, but its right leg hung uselessly, bleeding a thick black ichor that mixed with the water on the floor.
Harry, covered in dust on the ground, turned his head toward the door.
"Malfoy?"
Draco stepped into the bathroom.
He didn't look at Harry. He didn't look at Ron. His grey eyes, shining with the intensity of combat, were fixed on the creature trying to pull itself up using the broken sinks for support.
Draco walked over the bloody water without caring about staining his boots. His ebony wand was steady, pointing at the floor, ready for the next move.
"Pathetic," Draco said, his voice echoing in the destroyed bathroom. "An apex predator does not play with its food, Potter. It eliminates it."
The Troll, mad with pain, turned toward the new threat. It roared, spitting saliva and blood, and tried to lunge at Draco, dragging itself with its powerful arms.
Draco didn't back down.
He raised his wand. The System traced the perfect trajectory on his retina.
"Sectum..." he started to whisper, remembering his Head of House's spell, but stopped. No. Too characteristic. Too traceable.
He shifted intention in a split second.
He channeled his magic through the ebony wand, visualizing an invisible guillotine.
"CONFRINGO CORTEX!" (Explosive/Rending Cut).
The spell hit the Troll's thick neck. It wasn't a clean cut. It was a tearing impact that blasted open the tough skin and throat muscles in an explosion of black blood.
The beast choked. It brought its hands to its throat, trying to stem the vital flow escaping it, but it was useless. It gurgled, eyes rolling back, and fell face-first with a final crash that shook the bathroom's foundations.
The water on the floor turned black quickly, surrounding Draco's boots.
Silence.
Only the sound of water spraying from a broken pipe: Sssh... sssh... sssh...
Draco lowered his wand. His chest rose and fell with a controlled rhythm. The System flashed a gold notification in his peripheral vision.
[ENEMY ELIMINATED: MOUNTAIN TROLL][Style: Calculated Brutality.][XP Gained: 500.]
Draco pulled a silk handkerchief from his pocket and wiped an invisible speck of dust from his sleeve. Then, he looked up toward the corner.
Hermione Granger was looking at him.
She was trembling so hard her teeth chattered. Her eyes went from the mutilated corpse to Draco, and back to the corpse. There was terror in her gaze, yes. But there was also the absolute recognition that death had grazed her, and the blonde boy in front of her had stopped its scythe.
Draco smiled. It wasn't a kind smile.
It was the owner's smile.
Draco lowered the ebony wand slowly. The black wood still vibrated in his hand, warm, satisfied with the discharge of lethal magic.
He turned toward the entrance.
Harry Potter and Ron Weasley were there, frozen. Ron had his wand raised halfway, mouth open in a perfect 'O' of stupidity. Harry stared at the Troll's open neck with a mixture of nausea and awe. They had come playing heroes with stones and shouts; they had just witnessed a professional execution.
Draco ignored them. To him, they were irrelevant. Furniture.
He walked to the corner where Hermione Granger was still cowering, hugging her knees. She was covered in white plaster dust that contrasted with the dark splashes staining her uniform.
Draco stopped in front of her. The bloody water on the floor surrounded his dragon-hide boots, but he didn't care.
"Get up," he ordered.
His voice wasn't loud, but it had the weight of a gavel.
Hermione looked up. Her brown eyes were wide, pupils trembling. She looked at Draco not as a savior, but as another monster who had just killed the first one. She didn't move.
Draco clicked his tongue impatiently. He leaned down, grabbed her upper arm with an iron grip, and pulled her up. Hermione stumbled, legs failing her, but Draco held her steady, forcing her to stand.
"Look at it!" Draco hissed, turning her sharply to face the Troll's corpse.
"No... I don't want to..." she sobbed, closing her eyes.
"Open your eyes, Granger!" Draco squeezed her arm, almost to the point of pain. "This is magic. It isn't floating feathers or silver needles. It is power over life and death."
Hermione opened her eyes, forced by his willpower. She saw the open throat. She saw the necessary brutality.
"Your books didn't prepare you for this," Draco whispered near her ear, his voice cold and hard. "Logic doesn't stop a three-ton beast. Violence does. If I hadn't come in... right now you would be a smear on the wall."
He let her go. Hermione swayed but remained standing, looking at her own shaking hands.
"You... you saved me," she murmured, reality settling over shock.
"I didn't save you," Draco corrected, taking a step back and wiping a drop of blood from his cheek with the back of his hand. "I made an investment."
He stepped closer again, invading her personal space, forcing her to meet his eyes.
"There is something in our world called a Life Debt, Granger. It is ancient magic. Deep. And now, you owe me one. Your intellect, your future... belong to me until I say otherwise."
Hermione blinked, confused and terrified, but nodded slightly. The magic of the oath settled over her, invisible but heavy as a chain.
Suddenly, the roar of rushing footsteps filled the corridor.
"Oh, my Merlin!"
Professor McGonagall burst into the bathroom, wand raised. Behind her came Snape and Quirrell.
McGonagall stopped dead, hand to her mouth at the sight of the carnage. The red water, the debris, the nearly decapitated Troll.
"What... what happened here?" she asked, voice trembling with fury and relief. "You could have been killed! I demand an explanation!"
Harry and Ron exchanged panicked looks.
"We... er..." Ron started.
"Professor Snape," Draco interrupted.
His tone shifted instantly. The predatory coldness vanished, replaced by the perfect mask of the respectful and slightly shaken Slytherin student. He turned to his Head of House with a flawless bow.
"I heard screams from the second-floor corridor, sir," Draco said calmly. "I knew Miss Granger wasn't at the feast. I wanted to alert a prefect, but..." he gestured to the corpse, "...the beast was already attacking her. There was no time to find help."
Snape swept into the bathroom, his black cloak trailing over the dirty water without getting stained. He ignored Harry and Ron. He walked to the Troll.
His black eyes, pools of infinite suspicion, examined the wounds. He saw the severed tendons. He saw the slash in the throat. Clean cuts. Precise. Lethal. Mid-level Dark Magic.
Snape turned slowly toward Draco. He saw the boy's stance. He saw the ebony wand still in his hand.
He understood perfectly what had happened. And he understood that Draco Malfoy was no normal child.
"And what do you suggest, Mr. Malfoy," Snape said softly, "that a first-year student took down an adult mountain Troll by himself?"
"It was luck, sir," Draco lied, holding Snape's gaze. His Occlumency barriers shimmered invisibly. "Panic. I cast a cutting charm... I think I put too much intention into it."
"Luck..." Snape repeated, a shadow of a smile curling his thin lips. "Remarkably tactical luck."
Hearing this, McGonagall turned to Hermione.
"Miss Granger, is this true?"
Hermione looked at Harry and Ron. Then she looked at Draco. She remembered the Debt. She remembered the violence that had saved her when Ron's wand only made sparks.
"Yes, Professor," Hermione said, voice broken. "Harry and Ron tried to distract it, but... Malfoy stopped it. He saved my life."
McGonagall sighed, lowering her wand.
"Five points will be taken from Gryffindor for Miss Granger, for trying to take on a troll alone. And five from each of you, Potter and Weasley, for not alerting a professor."
She turned to Draco.
"However... Mr. Malfoy has demonstrated exceptional skill, however reckless."
"Twenty points to Slytherin," Snape intervened smoothly. "For pest control and quick thinking."
Draco inclined his head.
"Thank you, Professor."
McGonagall waved her hands.
"Alright, alright. Off to your dormitories. The feast is over. Miss Granger, we must stop by the Hospital Wing."
As they left the bathroom, Draco passed by Harry. The "Boy Who Lived" looked at him with a mix of suspicion and bewilderment, as if he had just seen a shark walk on land.
Draco didn't even look at him.
His work was done. The investment was secured.
Once outside, McGonagall began shepherding Harry and Ron down the corridor, scolding them with a mix of fury and relief.
"Sheer luck! Absolute foolishness! Come on, move!"
Hermione lagged behind for a second, dragging her feet. She was hugging herself, still trembling, white plaster stains in her hair making her look like a ghost.
Draco exploited the gap in surveillance.
He slid to her side. He didn't touch her; he didn't need to. His presence was heavy enough to stop her.
"Granger," he said quietly.
She startled, turning her head sharply. Her eyes were red and swollen, but when they met Draco's, the weeping ceased. The instinctive fear of the violence she had just witnessed froze her tears.
"Clean your face," Draco ordered, extending an immaculate silk handkerchief with his initials embroidered in silver. "You look like a victim. And I do not make deals with victims."
Hermione looked at the handkerchief, then at him. She took it with trembling fingers.
"You... you killed it. Without hesitating."
"Hesitation is a luxury corpses cannot afford," Draco replied, leaning slightly toward her. His voice dropped to a whisper that felt like ice against her skin. "Listen to me well. What happened in there... that creates a bond. Ancient magic. Blood for blood."
Hermione swallowed, her logical mind struggling to process the archaic concept.
"A Life Debt."
"Exactly." Draco smiled, a sharp curve at the corner of his lips. "Your life ended under that club, Granger. The one you have now... is borrowed. It is mine."
He straightened up, regaining his distance.
"Use it well. Do not waste it following idiots who throw stones at giants. I expect great things from my investment."
Without waiting for a response, Draco turned around. His cloak billowed, cutting the air.
"Miss Granger!" called McGonagall from the end of the hall.
Hermione turned to leave, but she clenched Draco's handkerchief in her fist. The silk was cold.
Draco walked in the opposite direction, toward the stairs leading to the dungeons. As he moved away from the torchlight into the green darkness of his domain, the System flickered one last time on his retina.
[QUEST COMPLETED: THE BLOOD CONTRACT][Asset Acquired: Hermione Granger.][Status: Active Life Debt.][Loyalty Level: Fear/Respect (Seed of Obsession).]
Draco began to whistle a low tune, barely audible. It was a funeral march, but he whistled it as if it were a victory song.
He reached the entrance to the Slytherin Common Room. The stone wall opened before he said the password.
Pansy Parkinson was there, right on the threshold, like a faithful guard dog. Upon seeing him, her eyes lit up, scanning his body for wounds. She saw the black blood stain on his boot. She saw the residual tension in his shoulders.
"Draco..." she sighed, taking a step forward.
Draco passed by her, brushing his arm against hers, sending a small discharge of his overflow magic that made her shiver with pleasure.
"The night has been productive, Pansy," Draco said, entering his kingdom. "Close the door. We have much to plan."
The stone wall closed with a dull rumble, sealing the Prince of Serpents in his nest, while above, in Gryffindor Tower, a muggle-born girl stared at a silk handkerchief and wondered why, despite the terror, she felt safer in the monster's shadow than in the heroes' light.
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