The Day I Saved The World

Draco Malfoy was a coward. It was a universally known fact; he ran in the face of danger, acting superior from his hiding spot, spitting slurs like they were wads of muggle paper in a strange, tiny plastic cylinder, an unrepentant grin on his pointy, pale face. 

He never had a reason to be repentant. Assured with the knowledge that he was superior, that his blood was superior. Used this insipid knowledge to taunt uppity Gryffindor mudbloods, to taunt the bloody “chosen one.” Though he admits that had less to do with his blood status, and more to do with the slight he was dealt at the tender age of eleven. 

It seems so stupid now. So small. So innocent. That hatred and vitriol— he’d likely kill to go back to that. To be clueless, to have the misfortune of his entire self than to be here, in this moment. In this castle, standing across the Dark Lord. 

Standing across from his mother. 

Draco Malfoy was a coward. 

He was a coward, and everyone knew it. 

He was a Slytherin, and above all, he was his mother’s son. So it surprised no one that when she called, he came. 

He didn’t want to, wanted to be as far from there as he could be, and wanted to never have participated in this war at all. But he couldn’t move. He was glued to the broken stone underneath his feet. But she called for him. Her eyes wide and begging, father a shadow of himself next to her. 

“Draco,” she’d said. “Come,” she’d beckoned with her hand, nails chipped so slightly you wouldn’t be able to tell if you hadn’t held that hand for seventeen years, stretching toward him. 

And he… 

He obeyed. 

Stepped down the fragile stairs to his mother. He was almost there, blocking everything out. The looks of his peers, the sadness in his professors’ eyes, the absolute desolation he felt. 

But Harry Potter was dead, wasn’t he? He was dead, and he stole Draco’s hope with him. Didn’t he? He had to. Because here he was, giving up. 

The Dark Lord approached him, a slimy smile on his face. His eyes so dead they resembled the monster he was. The monster Draco felt like, in the middle of the night. Three years of this war. Three years of torture, fear, and death. 

He was so tired. 

So fucking tired. 

“Well done, my boy.” The man (could he even be categorized as such, with what he’s done to himself in a mistaken bid for immortality?) crooned. His arms slowly wrapped around Draco. There was strength in them, but also a fragility, like he would break at the slightest blow. 

The Dark Lord was weak. 

Weak. 

A sniveling babe that had grown too big for its britches. An idiot who did nothing to better wizarding society; only ruined it. Killed any and all who opposed Lord Voldemort. 

Lord Voldemort was a shell of the leader he could have been. The change he could have wrought, instead of destruction. 

Draco knew his fate, should he win. 

Draco was a traitor. 

His fate would resemble his mother’s family’s ending. 

“Well done,” Voldemort repeated. 

His arms were still around him, slowly letting go. 

It slipped out before he could stop it, a curiosity that he didn’t feel coming to the forefront: “What was the point?”

The silence could cut glass. 

“…What?”

“What was the point of this stupid and pointless decimation of our kind? What did you gain from this? Why— just… why?” It was asked so point blank that the man was silent for a moment. It was a plea, the Malfoy begging for answers to how his life had gone to such shit. How he had become so fucking pathetic. 

(He was always pathetic. He knew that. He tried not to be, but he was a fucking coward, sniveling and hiding behind the biggest bully.)

The Dark Lord smiled. His rotting teeth were the only thing Draco could see. 

And he said the damning words that change everything. 

“Because I wanted it.” 

It wasn’t a conscious thought when his wand slid into his hand. He didn’t blink, watching the man’s face as he shoved his wand into the pale, pale— so cold and reptilian, like a fucking monster— skin of his neck and said, “You should have wanted something different.”

There was a snake-like hiss among his devoted followers, an itching to tear the little Malfoy heir limb from limb. “Little traitor…” his aunt whispered, gripping his mom’s arm. 

“What are you going to do, boy?” Voldemort asked, grinning. “Are you going to kill me? You? Do you think you have the nerve?”

Draco swallowed. Glanced at his mom, and told her everything he wanted to say. I’m sorry. I love you. I wish things were different. I’ll see you in the next life. Her eyes, the color matching his, stared back. They were grim, and they were set. He gritted his teeth, opened his mouth, and without speaking, blasted the man with his strongest bombarda. 

It was an array of colors, so many spells flying through the air, from his wand, from the Dark Lords, from the death eaters, from the students and teachers of Hogwarts... From his mother, trying to get to him.

“This one is for Harry Potter,” Draco gasped, throwing an expelliarmus at the devil across him. A red curse caught him in the shoulder, and his arm went limp. Panic laced through his veins. He was going to die. In this courtyard where he used to tease the Chosen One and his friends; this courtyard where he and Pansy had their first kiss, and the immediate squabble afterward. This is where he was transformed into a ferret by the pretender; by a death eater like his father. Like him. 

He dropped his wand. It’s a rush for it, scrambling like a rat in a trap. The Dark Lord laughed, a high keening as if he had already won. As if Draco had been defeated. “Give up, little boy, and I’m sure we can come to a… suitable punishment.” He said, his followers laughing and jeering at the blond boy. 

Draco knew that meant torture, more torture, some more torture, and then an inevitable, long-drawn, and entirely preventable death. 

He would not submit. He would win. “I don’t care if I die today; at least, in the end, I fought for what was right, and no matter what you do, you will inevitably lose,” Draco said, grinning with bloody teeth. “For you are a small-minded, weak, simpleton with no good breeding.” 

“How dare—” Bellatrix gasped, lunging for her nephew, stopped by the grey hand of her lord.

“Now, now, Bella. He is but a welp. This will be a good demonstration to the others here who oppose me. I will make an example out of him.”