It Could Have Been Me

Sixth Year

There were so many reasons to hate Draco Malfoy. The first time Harry had met him, he had rattled off his - or rather, his father’s - bigoted political beliefs, while also managing to impress onto Harry his prowess as a player of Quidditch. Since then, he has nothing but solidified his distasteful nature to Harry and Harry’s closest friends. He was a hateful, spoilt Slytherin and the embodiment of everything Harry sought not to be. And yet- and yet. Harry sometimes felt himself making excuses for him in his head this year. Almost- sympathising. He didn’t know what the bastard was up to, or for what heinous end he was trying to meet, but he knew enough to know that, whatever it was, he wasn’t enjoying himself. It was so un-Malfoy to not enjoy a cunning plan that it almost made Harry feel sick with it’s wrongness. After all - if Malfoy was hesitant, how awful could the undertaking be? Or maybe he was just changing - and more reluctant to do evil. It seemed that way sometimes, in the weary looks that, more often than not, occupied his face. He ate little on the odd occasion that he actually showed up to meals in the Great Hall, and according to the Marauder’s Map, slept little, too. So when Harry brought up to his friends his concerns of Malfoy having had received the Dark Mark, he simply hadn’t been able to convey that he was scared of that fact for Malfoy, not because of him or what he could do.

All this concern, or whatever it was, was quite distracting to say the least. One day, in the Great Hall, after Katie Bell’s return to full health, he looked over his shoulder to find Malfoy, looking more sickly and pale than Harry could remember ever having seen him. He rushed after the boy as he left the Great Hall, not entirely sure why, or what he planned to do when he caught up with him. Luckily, or not, he was stopped by a gentle gripping of his shoulder as he reached the doors, met with the ever-concerned face of his best friend, Hermione Granger.

“Harry, what are you doing? You have to stop this obsession with him- I’ve told you, he’s not a Death Eater.” Harry stared for a few moments after Malfoy’s retreating figure, before repeating her words in his head so as to make sense of them.

“I don’t- that’s not why I was… for god’s sake Hermione, how am I supposed to know what he’s going to do if you don’t let me follow him?” To Harry, it seemed like a perfectly reasonable request, one that he couldn’t understand being able to deny. Hermione rolled her eyes and dragged him out from the Great Hall and into the Entrance Hall so as not to draw more attention to her seemingly senile friend.

“Because! None of what he does is your business! Just because you think he’s going to try to kill off the Headmaster or something-” Hermione’s exasperated tone was cut off by Harry, who still had every intention of trying to find Malfoy after this frankly useless exchange.

“I don’t know what he’s trying to do, but it can’t be good.” Another roll of Hermione’s eyes had Harry needing to explain himself. “He’s going to end up killing himself or something, and I can’t just stand by and watch him be controlled by those monsters that call him family.” His teeth were gritted, his emotions only amplified by the fact that he had said them out loud.

Hermione did a double take. “What? Harry, you’re not making any sense…”

“Yes I am, but if you need a moment to sort out your confusion, I’ll just be on my way.” Harry’s attempts to move were sabotaged by Hermione’s now-iron grip on his shoulder, as she stared at him in wonder.

“You’re worried about him? Malfoy?” She asked tentatively, adding on the name to make absolutely certain she wasn’t mistaken.

“I - it’s more complicated than that. He isn’t acting like himself and I thought maybe if I just-” It was clear that Hermione was thinking too loudly to hear Harry’s half-hearted explanation so Harry just stopped talking all together, growing more impatient by the second.

“But Harry… He’s, well, he’s Malfoy.” Hermione said eventually, as if this reminder would be enough to pull Harry out of whatever delusion he had made for himself. Finally, Harry lost it, and said what he hadn’t even ever had the courage to fully form thoughts of in his own mind.

“It could have been me, Hermione! I was raised by them too. Not Narcissa and Lucius, but they were the same weren’t they? The Dursleys? If I hadn’t known that I had other people I could point to, to call my parents, how long would it have been, eh? Until I turned out like Dudley, or Malfoy. It was an awful way to grow up. Expectations of who not to be, and all these nasty, hateful thoughts and opinions thrown onto you all the time. The only thing that kept me sane for 11 years was the thought that I wasn’t like them. They weren’t my real family, and so I was able to imagine things that my actual family would tell me- the things they would say to guide me. Malfoy? He didn’t have that. He had nothing to ground him when his parents told him who to hate and who to love. He didn’t have any reason to not believe them, and then, when he comes to Hogwarts, proud to be named a Slytherin, he is told it is the evil house, and is immediately denied friendships by people because of the beliefs that he could only have assumed were the right ones, the ones that everyone held.” Harry stopped to blush at that one, thinking back to his rejection of that handshake, refusing to make friends with someone who didn’t know any better.

Hermione was stunned, and so Harry kept going, albeit calmer. “And now, he’s so caught up in this world, a web that ties together hate and family loyalty, and he’s looking for a way out. I know he is. I just know it, Hermione, and I want to be able to help him, but how could he possibly ever trust me?” Harry stared at her with searching eyes, pleading with her that she might have the answer, or something that showed that pouring his heart out had been worth it. Instead of words, Hermione eventually opened her arms and pulled her friend in for a hug, comforting him in a way he hadn’t known he needed until that point.

“Oh, Harry”, Hermione murmured into her friend’s shoulder in such a tone that sounded as if something had suddenly started making sense.

————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

After Dumbledore’s Death

Pansy stood in the doorway, her arms crossed, staring at her best friend as he packed his things frantically. She hadn’t knocked and he hadn’t lifted his head to see her standing there, and yet he could sense her standing there, attempting to gauge Draco’s state of mind.

“You could help me, you know, instead of just staring at me like I’ve just snogged a Hufflepuff.” The usually cutting tone Draco used when asserting himself with his friends - and enemies, for that matter - was absent, leaving a voice that rather sounded like he was close to tears.

“That’s it, you’re leaving? You’re just packing up your things and going back with Aunt Bellatrix to play happy little families?” Draco apparently wasn’t the only one who was frantic and possibly on the verge of tears. Pansy was distraught at the idea of Draco returning to the Manor, where there had been more than enough rumours about Voldemort’s current residence.

“Don’t act like you haven’t heard. I couldn’t do it, Pansy. He ordered me to, and I- I couldn’t…” Draco took a few moments to steady his breathing before continuing on. “They’ve asked me to come home, and so I must. If I wasn’t their puppet before, I am now. He said he’d kill me, Pansy, and now that I’ve failed, how do I know that he won’t? This is the best chance I’ve got - I have to do what they ask me to do.” Draco stopped packing and sat down on the bed, exhausted by this very rare display of emotions. “I’m sorry.”

Pansy shook her head, tears filling up her eyes. Draco knew that she wasn’t speaking because she was desperately trying to come up with a solution, some way that he could stay, but it was almost definitely in vain. “What on earth could you possibly be sorry for?”, she settled for saying, joining him on the half-stripped four-poster bed.

“For leaving you here to deal with the backlash?” Draco offered, “the whole school will be blaming you, along with the rest of Slytherin House.” Draco took a deep, shattering breath and continued, “I’m sorry for making Snape do it - he made an Unbreakable Vow, Pans. And I’m sorry that my failure to kill Dumbledore wasn’t even out of my own decision to rebel against the dark, it was out of cowardice. That’s what we are, Pans, we’re the dark - we always have been. There’s a right and a wrong here, and we’re on the wrong side.” Draco had never been one to apologise before- he’d always felt he’d been completely justified in all his actions. Pansy had never seen the boy so lost - he was so broken from this realisation, and there was nothing she could do.

“Not us, Draco.” She tried to reach out to her friend. “It’s them. You couldn’t kill Dumbledore because you knew it was wrong. You couldn’t kill Dumbledore because you don’t have that darkness within you, okay? Your life depended on your killing of another wizard, one you didn’t even particularly like. You knew the consequences of your inaction, and you still made that choice. That makes you different from them. And I’ve never been more proud.” Pansy wrapped her arm around Draco’s shoulder so tightly it was as if she were holding all his broken pieces together.

“We were brought up to think that way - I still… my opinions haven’t changed. Not dramatically, anyway.” Draco’s attempt to express his thoughts would have been lost on most but Pansy knew him well.

“Your… our beliefs don’t make us evil. Killing innocent muggles and mud- muggleborns -”, Pansy caught herself, “that’s evil. Thinking that just because you’re powerful and of pureblood ancestry, you have a right to decide who lives and who dies - that’s evil. You and I, we care - we’ve always cared about the preservation of tradition and wizard kind. We have a right to be - there is so much magic that will be lost if we let ourselves forget our old ways - but we wouldn’t kill for it Draco. There is a difference between having political beliefs and outright murder.”

The pair sat in silence for an undetermined amount of time. Pansy removed her arm from around Draco’s shoulder and instead moved it down to grasp his hand, which lay on his knee. Draco’s breaths were loud and infrequent, and it was obvious he was trying to calm himself down so as to speak to Pansy in the most emotionally-void way he could manage at that moment.

“He’s going to kill him, Pansy.” He needn’t say who, Pansy already knew the subject of this new conversation.

“You’ve always known that, Draco.” Pansy reminded him, as if it served as some kind of a comfort.

Draco nodded, so as to affirm the truth of her statement, but felt he had to elaborate. “It’s going to be soon, though. He’s getting restless. It won’t last much longer. Five years at most, perhaps even as soon as six months from now. And the only person who could save him, who could prevent it, is dead. Because of me.” His struggle for an emotionless tone at this point was lost - Draco was made to bite his lip to stop it from trembling.

Pansy took a deep breath. She had never really understood Draco and his obsession with the Boy Wonder. She didn’t know what it was about him that had caught Draco’s interest, but it wasn’t her place to question or deny it. It wasn’t what they were to each other that was baffling to her, or even what they thought of each other that confused her so much. It was what they could be, to each other, what she knew they had the potential to be, that caught her so unawares sometimes, knocking her off of her feet with its insanity.

“Sometimes - I think, Draco - I don’t know what you’re more afraid of. His death, or him dying before you get the chance to set things right between you two.” It was then that Pansy surprised Draco and herself by standing up, and walking out the door. Maybe it was because she couldn’t stand goodbyes, or, more probably, knew that she couldn’t bear to hear the babbling fool deny what they both knew to be true.