Friend, Enemy

"I can't hate you, Draco." Hermione took a deep, shuddery breath. "I can't hate you, and I don't know why. For five years you tormented me, belittled my talent, tried to beat me down so you could feel superior. I can't hate you for that." She paused, looking at the grave, studying it.

Draco Malfoy
1980-1997
A Faithful Servant

She sat down in front of it, running her fingers over the engraving. "For two years, I saw you try to step away from everything you had been taught. I saw you spy on the Death Eaters, even on the father you had admired your whole life. I saw the toll it took on you emotionally -- having to pretend to be one of them, something so easy and natural to you, and yet not what you wanted to be. In the end, you gave Harry to Voldemort. I can't even hate you for that. In my heart, I can't believe you betrayed Harry to his death, not without a reason." Her voice cracked, and she shifted her eyes away from the gravestone.

A light wind arose, ruffling her hair. Long moments passed, and she remained silent, letting the breeze wash over her, cleanse her.

Finally: "The war is over. Voldemort is gone. If you really were double-crossing us, you sided with the wrong team." She pushed herself up from the ground roughly. "I can't believe it, though, because I saw what you became in those two short years. If you double-crossed us, why did you die? Your throat was slit, they said, and the knife was in your own hand. You killed yourself after you betrayed Harry."

She fell silent again, shutting her eyes to keep back the tears welling in them. "I'm sorry the world thinks of you as a new Judas, Draco. But can't they see that without Judas, Jesus would never have been considered the Saviour? It's true that if Judas hadn't betrayed him, Jesus wouldn't have died. But if Jesus hadn't died, Christianity wouldn't have become one of the world's major religions."

She smiled a bit. "Sorry, my mouth runs away with me. It's the intellectual in me, you know. You understood that, I came to discover." Her smile grew. "Well, after you finished insulting me, anyway." Her mouth fell into a frown.

"The world thinks of you as a traitor, Draco. You will be remembered in history as a traitor. I can't change that. I know what I know, though: Harry's death sparked a fire in all of us. It made us work harder, research harder, fight harder. We had lost our hero, but we had to prove that we had more heroes than him. We couldn't let him die in vain. Maybe, in the end, it really was his destiny to die for us. Maybe he lived the first time so he could save us by dying later. And maybe you were enemies all those years so that it would be so easy, too easy, to believe that you betrayed him. Maybe it was your destiny to be an unacknowledged saviour. We'll never know, I guess. You died too soon. You thought we wouldn't believe you, that we wouldn't want to."

There was a long pause.

"You were right. At first, we wouldn't have. I hated you; we all did. None of us saw; we were in the middle of a war and our shining star had fallen. You probably would've been killed by one of our own before half your story left your lips. We might've regretted it, hated ourselves for it, but it would have been too late. It would've tormented us the way this will always torment me.

"There's no proof that you didn't really betray us. You know, Draco, that I'm a big believer in proof. Facts. One plus one equals two and so forth. I just can't believe that you'd ever want to hurt him. It's only a gut feeling . . . maybe just denial. Rationally speaking, I really shouldn't feel this way."

Hermione paused again, kneeling before the stone marker. "I'm sorry you had to be separated from him in death, too, Draco. You should be with him and the rest of the heroes, buried together in the memorial cemetery. No one would ever listen to me, though. No one would ever want to see the truth. Our world couldn't go on without you in the role of the traitor. For some people, lines between right and wrong must be clear; there can be no shades of grey. Not this time, not for you, not ever. I'm sorry; it's wrong . . . I can't change it. It's all politics, Draco, and politics leave a stain darker than war because it's always there, underneath the surface, poisoning us all. At least war is an overt action. But no matter what the history books say about you, I will believe until my dying day that you were really on our side."

She smiled sadly, running a hand over the smooth engravings. "You know why?" She stood, brushing the dirt off her robes. "It's not just because you really seemed to believe everything you said, or because you fought so hard and were still tortured by the fact that you were betraying your own father. It's not even because you killed yourself."

She kissed her hand and pressed it to his name before backing away. Smiling slightly, she added, "It's because you were still such an arse after you came over to our side. You weren't playing nice; you were still yourself, only on a different side."

Her smile faded, and she retreated a few more steps. "I will always believe you, Draco. Good-bye," she whispered.

She turned and walked away, forcing her head and shoulders upright. Minutes later, another figure crept towards the grave, tufts of red hair hanging in his eyes, hardly blocking the hatred burning in them. Whatever he was planning to do there left his mind as soon as he read the gravestone, and he whipped around, his eyes, wide and shocked, settling on the Hermione's tiny silhouette in the distance.

Draco Malfoy
1980-1997
A Faithful Servant
to Destiny

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End