The Redemption of Draco Malfoy

The Redemption of Draco Malfoy

I wrenched my sodden eyelids apart. They seemed to feel gluey and heavy as if they were made of the adhesive of a newly licked down stamp. Beneath me the floor was hard, prodding into the small of my back.

Then slowly, very slowly, the world seemed to blink into a dreary sort of focus, its main and only event being Harry Potter leaned over me, his eyes boring into mine with a startled intensity that did not belong there.

His hand was pressed down on my right shoulder and the weight felt oppressive somehow, as if he were pinioning me to the floor. Why he was leaning on me I didn't know. Memory of a potion exploding, the loud, banging noise that followed, and fast, sharp white lights coursing through my pupils seemed to come back to me, but I couldn't remember if that had been yesterday or today. Perhaps it had only been a dream, I thought as I drifted around the fields of consciousness. Perhaps I was dreaming now.

Conceivably there could have been other people around me in what seemed to be the potions dungeon, but Potter was blocking my view entirely. All I could see was his face and his hair, and a disarming halo around them from where he blocked out the ceiling lamp. The more things change, I suppose.

"Draco!" he said. I would have told him what was wrong with my name coming from his tongue, but the state of my health and my general overwhelming weariness towards him, towards anyone, forbade it. I just had the desire to go to sleep and never wake up. Everything in me and out of me felt bone-weary.

"Don't call me that, scar-head," I eventually tried to say but my voice sounded fuzzy and weak. The volume seemed to have got lost somewhere along the way. Potter clasped his free hand to his mouth horrified and blinked down at me through the glass circles. He had a gargantuan spot with white in it, right on the top of his upturned little nose. I only noticed it then. It was completely repulsive.

"You sound awful," he said decisively. "I couldn't even hear you properly then. I'm getting Madame Pomfrey right now no matter what Snape says. Professor! Professor!"

"What's your problem?" I muttered exasperated, but my voice still sounded very weak, and I don't think Potter heard on account of this. I was so tired. It was worse than that time we went out on the hunt, Father and I that is. We scoured all night for Mudbloods or Muggle-lovers, traipsing through half the local countryside, but there didn't seem to be anyone in the usual isolated places and in the end we had to portkey home. Father was utterly furious and I felt extremely ill for several days afterwards and could not leave my room. This felt like that, except perhaps a little worse. "Potter, what have you done? Get Pansy."

"What? You're speaking so quietly," he said, looking into my eyes with that still misplaced and frankly unsolicited concern and then looking away. "Did you just call me Potter? You haven't done that since second year. I think you must have a concussion Draco."

"I -" I tried to say, curving my tongue to form a refusal. Potter continued to look down on me hopefully, half smiling and half concerned, his hair sticking up on end. It was more than I could take. I gave into myself and allowed my eyes to close blissfully and my mind to free itself from daily concerns. The last thing I heard was Potter shouting my name.

***

The next time I awoke was distinctly less unpleasant. I felt still rather bleary as if I were recovering from a bad cold, but no acne-riddled nemeses were leaning over me which was a definite plus to the scenario. The disorientation had gone too. It was the hospital wing, and I was lying in an uncomfortable bed with the curtains pulled around me, a vision in white cotton and linen. There was a smell of scourging agents.

"Madame Pomfrey!" I called out. My voice was still not at maximum strength and my throat was very dry. "Madame? Anyone? I'm injured! I may be dying!"

"Draco really," a thoughtful voice said from somewhere near my left ear. I yelped and turned my head from the ceiling to find that Granger was sat by my bedside, calmly reading a voluminous looking book. I was completely at a loss as to what she thought she was doing at my bedside, dressed in a yeti-like blue cardigan and some awful navy skirt. God, she really was ugly. I mean, obviously when something is bred the wrong way they're going to look pallid and sickly, but they can't all looked as bad as her.

"Granger, what the hell are you doing here?"

"Well, I thought I'd come and make sure you get the homework you missed," she said conversationally. "And I was going to bring some grapes, but Ron thought you'd probably just give them away so I decided not to bother. Oh and by the way, Hermione's fine you know."

"It most definitely isn't!" I said incensed. "Your blood is dirty, Granger. Don't stand too near me. As if I would associate with you. Why are you all molesting me? Just go away!"

"I'd rather you didn't call me that, even if your memories are fuddled," she replied coldly.

"I'll call you what I damn well -" I started, but succumbed to a protracted bout of coughing midway. The pain was agonising. It felt as if my lungs and throat were being split apart by a white-hot poker.

"Oh! Oh!" Granger gasped, standing up and dropping her book in the process. "It's alright, Draco, it's alright. Just easy now, easy..."

Madame Pomfrey bustled suddenly through the curtains looking her usual organised, matronly self. She always hated me, possibly because of the various people I had sent to her hospital wing over the years through cursing them or Crabbe and Goyle's acting on my orders. Not that anything was ever proved, but she was all too eager to point the finger of blame all the same.

She's a charlatan anyway, so Father says. Apparently she isn't fully trained, she failed the St. Mungo's Healers test so she had to come to Hogwarts and be a nurse for the unwashed proletariat of students here. I don't know if I believe it, but I believe that she certainly hates our Family and me.

"Mister Malfoy, just lie back," she said.

I lay back down flat, staring at the ceiling once more and was reassured to find that the spasms subsided a little bit. I took my nerve in both hands. "What's wrong with me?"

"Well, we don't quite know," she admitted briskly. Father would soon remove me I thought from this ward anyway and have me put in the private Malfoy ward at St. Mungo's with silk percale sheets and fresh flowers each day. Any day now, I would hear from him by Owl and leave this place, Potter and Granger along with it.

"Potions, I think a potion exploded in my face," I said trying to urge her along, boiling it down to the simplest level possible. Granger fluttered a bit next to me like a coiled spring.

"We were brewing Danvers's Solution, it was just after the St John's Wort was added," she explained, and Madame Pomfrey nodded sagely. "He just went out like a light. Harry added chickweed by mistake, and the thing exploded in their faces. Harry ducked, but I guess Draco wasn't that quick. It was awful."

"I'm sleepy, I feel sick," I said, staring to the ceiling. Madame Pomfrey tutted between her lips.

"Miss Granger, classes start soon, and there's no point you being here. Why don't you get Mr. Potter to wait with Mr. Malfoy? I'm sure they both can copy your class notes just this - er - once," the matron suggested carefully. I had the distinct impression she was trying to get rid of Granger.

"Oh, yes, I know Harry's dying to see if you're okay," Granger blathered. I would have turned across to see her face but having seen it before I imagined it would still resemble the buck-toothed chinchilla it always had. Besides, the pain was less if I stared straight up at the ceiling. There was a crack on the side nearest the door. The school was a complete shambles. No wonder Father always hated it here.

"Yes, well bring him in. He'll keep him quiet at least. Such a whinging boy I never met." Pomfrey said cheerfully, pinching my cheek. I yelped indignantly.

"No! I don't want to be stuck with Potter!" I wailed. "Get me Pansy or Blaise. Why do you all think I'm your friend? My father wouldn't stand for this. Get me some parchment this instant! I'm writing home."

"See?" I heard Granger whisper. Madame Pomfrey whispered something back in a pious tone and they continued to have a hushed conversation. I could hear Granger making fervent acquiesces every now and again. Finally they thought to speak directly to me instead of about me.

"Draco, your father isn't with us," Granger said softly. I heard the curtains rustle, presumably on account of Madame Pomfrey leaving me alone with the chinchilla.

My mind went instantly cold. "What?"

"He's - well, he's dead. He's been dead two years. Don't you remember?" she broke off for a moment and made a funny little sighing noise. "No, of course you don't you poor thing. He's, well, in second year you and Harry fought Tom Riddle you know, the Basilisk, and you killed him. Well the diary form of him. Your father was - he was apprehended when Voldemort rose again because of it."

"Because of me, you mean?"

"Yes, in essence," she said uncomfortably. I had the thought she might be squirming. "But before that, you hadn't spoken to him properly in years, since second year. Voldemort took it as weakness that Lucius couldn't raise a decent son. You helped us. Told us about Tom's diary as soon as you realised, and the Heir of Slytherin. You thought it might be Blaise, but of course..." she trailed off weakly.

"This has to be the lamest trick you people have ever come up with," I said weakly, shaking my head. The movement caused my head to feel light and weak. I kept staring straight up the ceiling afterwards. "Granger, I would never help you or Potter."

"Well you did," she replied firmly but not unkindly I suppose. Insufferable do-gooder.

"I know I wouldn't. What was in it for me?"

"Nothing!" she said dropping the pious act and sounding absolutely furious. "Moral decency? I don't know, Draco. All I know is that in first year you were completely repugnant, completely dominated by the father that you don't even like, and then in second year, you came up to us and said you knew the heir wasn't Harry and - and, you just sat with us. It was the strangest thing. But it's never really changed since then."

"Why would I? I hate you. You make me sick, all of you. I'm a Slytherin."

"I don't know why you did. You only ever told Harry, and he said he believed you. That was enough. But I do know that you don't hate us," she said with a swell of feeling and the threat of tears in her rising voice. "You don't, Draco. And we don't hate you. If we ever did it's long passed. You fit with us, and we, look, we love you all right. You're one of my dearest friends now and Harry, well," She appeared to be crying now. "You were there when we did it. We couldn't have done it without you."

I hate hysterical women. Mother never acted in this way. It was completely unfitting for a female to cry in front of men, so I have been taught. "Done what?"

"Killed him, of course! I can't believe you don't remember. Voldemort is dead. Last year, Draco? Don't you remember? Voldemort lured Harry with Sirius, but you reminded him about the mirrors and Harry saw Sirius was fine? Harry didn't even tell us about it. Sometimes I think the two of you are -"

"Sirius Black? Isn't he dead? Father said in his letter Voldemort had dealt with him last year. What mirror? Granger, something is very wrong here. I want my people. Get me Pansy or Malcolm."

"Oh," she carried on, still in full spew, waving a hand to silence me as if she were used to being addressed in such a way, displaying that same lack of decorum that was not fitting to a woman, "oh no, let me finish at least Draco. Well, Harry made it clear to Sirius and they worked out what was going on. Dumbledore told you and Harry about the prophecy, about how they were linked you know, and we got there with everyone. Harry did it. But oh Draco, you were amazing."

"I don't know what on earth you're talking about, but I do know that this reality is not mine and I want to go home. Get Snape to remix the potion. Granger don't leave me here. This is hell! I want Pansy! My father isn't dead. This is completely preposterous. All of it."

"Your favourite colour is light blue!" she said with desperation. "Your childhood toy was a bear called Russet. Your father," and lowering her voice she continued, "had a policy of encouraging you to torment the house elves any way you could devise. You caught one of them in a large, spiked trap and left it there for several days until it died and both of you thought it was an excellent ruse. He told you to befriend Harry for the cause and you tried but it didn't work and it really pissed you off."

"Granger, anyone could have told you those things," I pointed out.

She crossed her hands over that horrible sweater. "All right. You used to want to be Harry terribly badly. You whinge continually, but really you do what you have to, when it comes to it. You hate people sometimes and nothing they can do will change it. Seamus for example."

"Rat-bastard," I interjected with feeling but I wasn't quite sure why. I didn't know Finnegan at all well. He was just an also-ran, a putrid Gryffindor who drooled over the Boy Who Lived and licked his grubby boots. While this didn't endear him to me, it hardly singled him out.

"Yes, well," she said, half laughing but clearly trying not to, "quite. Anyway, Draco, you're here now. I know you think you're in the wrong reality, and that it must be frightening, but eventually you'll remember, trust me. I'm not wrong very often."

She leant over me then and kissed my forehead very lightly. Her lips brushed my skin. I thought of all the warnings of disease and contamination from Father about touching mudbloods and surreptitiously wiped my hand over where she'd touched my skin. You never know about that kind of thing. I don't like to take the risks.

"Goodbye dear. Don't worry. Harry will be here soon," she whispered and shuffled out. I kept my head firmly fixed towards the ceiling, feeling numb and sick as everything began to sink in. Father was dead. Wherever I was, I was very far away from home now.

The feelings I had were intermingled so tightly I couldn't pick a definite one out. Revulsion at Granger and Potter and Weasley, probably just because he existed. Father was dead. I was in the throes of the odious Gryffindors. I was probably going to get some kind of contagious disease from Granger having touched me. Father was dead. No one would come and see me out of the hospital wing now.

Where was I?

This wasn't my world, and I didn't want it to be either. Nausea rose in my throat, but I let it lie there, stinging my skin. This was the kind of place where Potter called me my first name, and where Granger kissed me and spoke without hissing. The kind where Voldemort was dead. Where I did something useful for Potter. I had become as much of his lackey as anyone else. And my father was gone.

Madame Pomfrey came into my cubicle, and told me to sit up for a moment. I obeyed, and she tipped a noxious potion down my throat, saying it might restore my memories. When I tried to point out that I was in the wrong reality and so it was hardly bloody likely, she shook her head and muttered something about dangerous potions and incompetent teaching.

"Well, you can have visitors," she said kindly. "I know I shouldn't, but well, after all you and Mr. Potter have done it's the least I can do. Don't let him stay too long though. You have to rest."

I downed the rest of the potion mutinously and it stung furiously to boot but once the burning had subsided, my throat felt a little better. Perhaps I could play this hero card, I thought, to my advantage. Get a private room maybe, a foot bath, a full size Wizarding chess set installed properly in Slytherin. There could be perks but then, perhaps I was bankrupt, and perhaps I didn't manipulate my power. Well sod that for a game of soldiers. This wasn't my world; I could do what I liked.

"Don't you want to see him?" Madame Pomfrey asked fussily. "How does your throat feel?"

"Better. Oh for God's sake, send him in," I snapped. Better to curb his enthusiasm now, before it got out of hand and he took to sending me earwig-riddled bunches of flowers and heart shaped cards that sang. Maybe I could make him cry, I were really lucky.

She beamed as if I'd agreed to have my name engraved on her chest surrounded in a big heart. "I know you'll get everything back soon," she said, unconsciously echoing Granger, and patted my head tenderly.

Then Potter trotted in and I felt decidedly strange as if I were remembering him, but not as I remembered him, if that made sense. He seemed to hold a huge import my mind, but I couldn't ascertain why. It was certain that my mind was responding with instantaneous gladness at his presence, but half of it still seemed to be at odds, still filled with the intense hatred I knew better than myself. Looking at him was feeling nauseous and bilious. I struggled to get a hold of myself.

"Hey," he said with a little smile. "Hermione says your memory's messed up. So I don't know really what to say or anything, I guess I'll just sit here and check you don't start coughing up blood or anything. How're you feeling?"

"Great," I disdainfully commented hoping to shoo him away with my ire but he took a seat anyway.

"So what do you remember?" he asked cheerfully. For the first time I started to realise that this wasn't a long-running hallucination. This really was another reality, and I had Potter at my disposal. Wonderful, I thought. Lose a father, but gain a best-friendly nemesis.

"Hating you. In my reality Sirius Black died, and my father is alive in Azkaban, which is where you put him incidentally," I spat.

"Oh." He blinked through his little owlish glasses and I felt something rise in my throat which was probably due to the defective potion Madame Pomfrey had brewed. "Sorry, I guess?"

"Potter, you hardly have to be sorry about something that happened in another reality," I snapped. "It's not like you actually remember doing it."

"No," he agreed. He rubbed his hair. "I guess you don't remember us, well, no I guess not." He paused for a long time and I hoped that he would go away, but instead he chose to come back with a "What do you think of the Cannons recruiting Boyle then?"

My mind flipped in on itself. This conversation was all wrong. The world tottered around my bed.

My mind's eye was starting to make scenes that didn't come from me, things I hadn't been, things I hadn't done or seen. I could see Potter and Weasley looking trashed. Potter slumped on a chaise-longue, his eyes closed and his hand clutching a beer bottle. A shockingly disorganised looking house. Granger smiling in a little blue dress on what seemed to be a beach. Other things. Screaming people. Someone falling. A noise that sounded like the end of the world. Someone mounting a woman on a table that looked like mine. Screaming. An endless void of noise. Longbottom collapsing to the floor. Potter stood up tall, an epitome of the victorious hero. Noise. My mother who looked asleep. Then nothing. A sense of peace.

I had strange feelings too mounting within me. Emotions that I had not felt before. A feeling of worry about things I had done in the past. Fear about the way things worked. A sense of admiration for other people's moral actions. Concern for other people. And Potter, God, I felt something about him. It was like a sharp stab at me, within me and without me as if the forces of the world were coming onto me quite at once. And it occurred to me that he wasn't so much Potter as Harry, and I wasn't so much Malfoy as Draco. I felt sick.

"Yeah, I know," Potter agreed although to what he was agreeing I wasn't entirely sure as I hadn't said a word, "I couldn't believe it. Boyle is just not a chaser! That man should be a beater or nothing. What are they playing at?"

"H- Potter. Shut up." I said faintly, and realised I had been about to call him Harry. This worried me beyond anything else so far. I couldn't let myself sink into this world and into this Draco. I wouldn't do it. "I think my memories are coming back Or, I don't know, I feel strange."

"Do you remember me at all?" he asked hesitantly. It seemed a strange question, but I hardly knew how to answer it in light of the memories suffusing through my mind and the emotions that just seeing him seemed to be eliciting. I was frightened. So frightened of what was happening to me here, why I was here, and how I would ever get home.

"I think so," I said.

"What do you remember?" he asked for the second time in our brief conversation.

"Screaming," I said. He gulped. "I think someone was dying. You and Weasley looking very drunk, Her- Granger on a beach. You standing, we were in a room with statues? You looked sort of victorious."

"Oh my God," he said.

"What? Potter, I want you to explain everything. From the beginning to me."

"Everything?" he repeated. "Are you sure you want to know? There's been a lot of bad stuff."

"I have to know! Imagine how you'd feel if you woke up best friends with the Slytherins and you had been for years. You'd go mad. I have to know what's going on Potter."

"Yeah I guess you do," he said.

"So?"

"So where am I supposed to start?"

"Wherever you want. Second year. Just start."

"On one condition," he said and I was surprised by how cold he sounded and how quick he had changed mood. Who knew Potter had a mercurial nature?

"Which is?"

"You have to start acting nice, even if you don't feel it. If you're still the same brat you were in first year, then I don't know how you'll manage it, but you'll have to try. Call me Harry, Call Hermione her name. If you slur her, people will know something's up."

"Something's up? Something is up. I'm in the wrong reality," I pointed out, shuffling on my pillows and seeing Potter's face leaning over me whenever I closed my eyes.

"No, but Draco, I mean, say this isn't the wrong reality, right? Say you really do belong here and you go around insulting your friends, where are you going to be when you wake up and realise what you've done? Just cool it. Why can't you just go with it? This reality's really not that bad anymore."

"Potter, when did you develop emotional sensibility?"

He flushed strangely. "Erm, well you know. I guess all your memories really aren't back, right?"

"Oh my God, I'm not a Gryffindor am I Potter?" I asked, suddenly feeling very drowsy. I had heard tell of students who changed houses in a fit of pique concerning their own house and lived to regret it. One of them moved from Slytherin to Ravenclaw when I was in first year. She never really made it in either house, being neither one nor the other. It seemed likely that I was a candidate now, whoever I was here. I was almost glad my father wasn't alive to see this. He would have been so angry.

"Erm, no," he said rubbing his hair rather frantically and looking bemused. "Hey, look I know this is really - this is really weird, but I was kind of worried about you today and I figured something out. I guess your memory's shot, and you hate me so it's not a very good time, but I - err -"

I tried very deliberately not to think about things. About how this opportunity was golden, about how I could use this against him for years because from the way he was stumbling I could see it was vitally important to him. And about how open he was. About how unused to having such relationships I was. When all was weighed up, I could only think of one thing to say to him: "I wouldn't."

"Wouldn't what?" he said tremulously.

"Tell me anything. Think about it, Potter. I may have memories of you circling around my mind, but does it make me trustworthy? When I get back to my world, I am going to use this against you, you know. And I won't care about doing it. Just think. You asked me to be nice, well, all right here. But in reality, there's no chance."

"Why tell me then?" he asked. And I had rather hoped he wouldn't. "You can't be that remorseless if you actually tell me that."

"Well, I feel weird; I feel like I know you really well. Like we're - like we're friends. I think I'm starting to fade into myself here. I don't know if I can control it either."

"Okay," he said biting down on his lip hard.

"I think I might sleep now," I said.

"Okay," he repeated. "I - that's all right. Feel better."

He hurried out, without having told me anything at all. People seemed to be leaving me awfully quickly. And I got the distinct impression there was something that I was just not being told.

***

I was quietly resting, neither asleep nor awake, thinking about things and using the techniques my mother taught me. The ways to focus out of pain, to let it be acknowledged and to let it lie, without letting it consume you whilst keeping your face reserved. It was harder in this body to reach that mental state. Either this Draco had less pain to work through and so it was neglected or he hadn't taken the right tutelage. Suddenly inspiration hit me.

"Madame Pomfrey!" I called shrilly. Within time she rustled through the curtains. "Can I go, do you think? I mean," I smiled my most winning smile, "I like the hospital wing, but I'd rather recover in my own bed at Slytherin."

"Ah, I should think the Headmaster will want to see you first," she said and I gulped. This was never good news. Dumbledore seemed to have a pronounced dislike of me since I refused to stand to commemorate that arse Cedric Diggory's death. What was he expecting? My father wouldn't have done it.

"Can't he see me in my dorm?"

"No, no, he wants to see you personally here. And remember, tomorrow you're on holiday, so it's the last chance he's got," she reasonably said. Pomfrey seemed awfully happy, lighter and more relaxed. Must have been the Dark Lord's downfall. Either that or she got buggered, but I can't imagine who would.

Holiday. The thought suddenly hit me. Holidays. The Christmas holidays. I was scheduled to go home to Malfoy Manor, but of course, if Father were dead, there didn't seem much chance. And Mother, well she hadn't been home at Christmas for a few years. The South of France called to her. What little time I saw of her and spent with her seemed to be concentrated in her teaching me ways to combat him and spraying me with perfume, dressing me up as her doll. It was all she could do for me, I suppose. That and to send me things, of course.

"All right, I'll wait," I said. "Where did Potter run off to, anyway?"

"How should I know?" she asked and I had to concur there was no reason she would know. She bustled off and I could hear her admonishing the person in the bed next to me saying that 'you know perfectly well not to use that charm Morag. How many more times? You can't get beautiful skin by trying to bleach it!'

After several minutes, I lay down on the bed and closed my eyes again, preparing to drift into another state of consciousness. I had wanted to read my diary. I thought it might explain to me what I was, and where I was going. For it seemed unlikely that anyone else would know or elaborate. I must have been dosing, as when I woke up, the Headmaster was sat in the same chair Potter and Granger had earlier occupied, looking sombre and concerned. I noticed he had a long red welt down the side of his face that I had never seen before.

"Headmaster?" I said and he finished swallowing whatever it was he had been chewing.

"Ah, young Draco, I hear you have lost your memories," he said with a twinkling eye. "Think you are in the wrong reality, hmm?"

"Well, yes," I said quailing slightly under his eye which for all it's twinkling remained a cold blue shock underneath. I felt scrutinised and weak, as if everything was stripped away and all that remained was me and him in the world.

"And tell me about the reality you came from," he said. Had the words had been from another, they would have sounded patronising and phoney, but as it was they sounded kind and benign. He was the first person I felt I could really explain to. And beggars can't be choosers. If I had had any friends in Slytherin they would have visited me instead of Granger and Potter. That much was obvious.

So I told him everything. About Father, and about Potter and the Potter stinks badges and the fights of the years and Cedric Diggory and absolutely everything I could remember about my life and the lives of those around me. The latter category was worryingly slim. I told him other things too. Things about the grades I'd got that had made me proud, even if no one else seemed to be. The things that I kept secret in my reality except in my diary. The fear I had about this reality came pouring out of me, and all the while he listened, occasionally saying 'hmm' or 'yes, I see' but not interrupting or judging.

"Yes, I understand where you came from," he said finally. "And I understand how to get you home. But it might take a while."