"And above all, love is comfort- and love for the world makes a comfortable living."

It was a long cold night on a park bench, one of the longest nights of Draco's life (post-War, anyway). Apparently, muggle police didn't take kindly to vagrants sleeping on park benches- one woke Draco, thinking him some drunken rich boy who had stayed out too late. Draco stumbled wearily to a park a few blocks away, set wards of invisibility around a bench, and laid down once more. The metal was cold and it had rained earlier in the evening, leaving droplets all along the bench.

It was a restless night, complete with all the unwelcoming sounds of London after hours- at two, someone screamed; at three, a chorus of drunken friends sang their way down a nearby street; at half-five, a man on the street corner babbled to himself about a chicken and an umbrella before diving into a pile of rubbish and falling asleep. The sky was shale gray and cloudy when the rain picked up again, and Draco reluctantly sat up, accepting sleep would be a far ally tonight.

He was surprised to find someone sitting at the end of the bench.

The stranger was an older fellow, twinkling blue eyes rather like Dumbledore's, a darker face and a wide, close-lipped smile. The man dressed simply in midnight blue robes- wizard robes- with no adornment or patterns. Draco raised his eyebrows.

"Oh- er- hello," he greeted the stranger, who simply nodded. Draco clasped his hands between his knees and looked around. It seemed his ward was still in place- a nearby muggle glanced briefly in the direction of the bench and then looked away, confounded, and walked off in another direction. Draco turned back to the old man. "I'm sorry, do I know you?"

The stranger shook his head, still smiling wordlessly.

Draco nodded once. "Alright… Well, I'm not sure if you noticed, but I set certain wards to keep others out, and I'm not entirely sure how you got in here."

The stranger nodded, expression unchanged.

Draco stared at him for a moment, and felt obliged to explain further. "I'm not sure if- if you recognize me- most people do- but I'm kind of hiding from my parents at the moment. Did they send you? I'm not sure if you know, or, really, why I'm explaining, but they dragged me into a war on the side I least wanted to fight for- I didn't want to fight at all- and… Anyway. I kind of snapped last night, and just didn't want to go back home. My mum's not all bad; it's my dad who made things worse for us. Funny thing is, Mum's a lot more frightening than him- she just keeps it to herself."

Draco glanced back over at the old man, to see him listening intently.

"And then there's this girl-" It seemed this morning Draco's tongue was determined to betray all his secrets, but he found himself too exhausted to care. "She's… She's beautiful, in every way. The most vibrant soul. I thought she was the spark I was looking for, but it turns out she's less like fire and more like water- and I still don't know why I'm telling you all this- but anyway. She's been helping me become the person I wish I was, over the past couple of weeks, and I may have made a mistake last night by asking her to- to go on a date with me. She rejected me, flat-out." He laughed, surprising himself, and saw the old man's eyebrows raise. "Can't say I blame her, really. I don't deserve her at all. I was just… Feeling buoyant, thought I'd try my luck. I've been such a lovestruck fool around her there's no way she didn't know- I'm sorry, there's no way you care about any of this. I'll be going, then. Need… A strong drink."

He rose from the bench, half-bowed to the old man, and lifted the wards before quickly hiding his wand once more. He started for the side-walk.

A voice froze him:

"Young man- no longer caring about pretense is the most freeing thing you've ever done for yourself."

Draco whipped around, raising his eyebrows at the stranger. "You can talk?"

"And I've much to say. It might help you- it might not. I'll trade you some words if you'll buy me breakfast and a coffee."

Draco's coinpurse still rested in his pocket. He nodded, contemplating, as he looked around. "Oh- okay, yeah. Sure. There's, er- a tea-shop just around the corner, they sell pastries and coffee. Shall we?"

The old man's eyes twinkled. "If you'll be my escort."

ooo

"But what has this got to do with it?"

"Look around you- tell me you don't see your soul staring back in charcoal and oil."

Muggles flocked to and fro around Draco and the stranger- who had yet to give his name- in the Guildhall Art Gallery. Accents and dialects filled the room; people from all over had come to stare at canvases filled with color centuries ago. Draco didn't quite understand the allure. His mother had tried this same tactic once, but she had chosen poetry as a medium. Draco began to roam among the crowd in his torn, water-stained suit, his hair in disarray, and reflected too many times that he must look as haggard and homeless as that old babbling fellow from that morning.

He passed into a hall of a more eighteenth-century focus; less people filled this corridor, and Draco quickly saw why: the paintings were of a macabre variety, featuring dark scenes or plain boring ones. Scattered among depictions of fruits and dishes, he spotted the occasional work that didn't make sense to his eyes- pieces of intestines or brains smashed together into something that didn't quite take shape. It seemed this was meant to be 'nature morte', but it didn't make sense to him, didn't make sense at all really, and he left with discomfort prickling along his shoulders and ribs.

He passed a red wall with a focus on portraits. He let his eyes roam the canvases, but, while he saw the skill involved, he couldn't appreciate these faces any more than strangers milling around him. He paused at this- they were all strangers, and yet, there they were, captured in color. His mind returned to the moving paintings in Hogwarts; pieces of people long-since dead remained captured in paint. Muggles had no such magic and yet… There was something enchanting to think someone had fallen so deeply in love with the curve of someone's nose, the breadth of someone's cheek, that they simply had to immortalize that person in art. They were all strangers, yes- but there, that woman in the blue dress had sorrow in her eyes, despite her smile. The muggle standing next to Draco, a girl likely in her mid-teens, stared with awed eyes at a painting of a man in red. They were all strangers- and yet they were all of them art.

Astoria, then, was a masterpiece.

He imagined, briefly, painting her- but it would take an artist of grandeur to perfectly capture the flutter of her ebony eyelashes, the graceful fall of her walnut curls, the ivory slopes of her cheeks. Oh, she would make a lovely painting- and only the most skillful painter could capture her duality on canvas.

Draco moved away from the portraits; something was stirring in his chest and he wasn't ready for it. He needed new scenery.

But the next turn replaced the movement with crumbling despair. The collapse of the Colosseum would cause less destruction than this. He was weeping before he quite understood why.

He was face-to-face with a gargantuan painting of impending battle. Men in red flocked to the edge of a dock, beyond which a flaming ship sank into dark waters. There were men in the water, a white horse crushed among the red-coats, flames licking the wooden hull of the ship…

It was destruction and it was duality. It was the white horse of justice, the red coat of the law; it was the fires purifying the wicked- or were the men on the dock trying to save the men in the water?

Draco saw himself, drowning, as the good watched him fall away. He saw his mother and father next to him, his aunt, his uncle, his only family. He saw men and women who had always been close by as he grew up. He saw them all- drowning- burning- as justice looked on and said they'd known what they were doing when boarding the ship.

For a moment, he saw Buckbeak, flying through the clouds, free in the wind. He felt crushing regret as he remembered mocking Hagrid- everyone had something they cared about, and Draco had done so much not to lose his loved ones, while mocking someone losing a loved one. Draco saw his friends, and saw that he was alone. He saw fire, and he saw water, and he saw Astoria, and he wondered that she had not yet destroyed him.

But hadn't she?

The Draco who drowned in the water was the husk he was shedding. Draco was somewhere between water and dock, salvation and despair, and the suffering in his chest broke his ribs and left him hollow and filled him with pain and filled him with love. And what would his mother think? She had seen the war, had known the dangers, had been terrified for years. He wondered if she, too, would weep at this painting- but his mother had always been stronger than him. Draco, for all his arrogance and need to prove himself, had always been "just a boy." And he had never had a choice. Neither had she- but Narcissa Black, Narcissa Malfoy, had never dared show weakness. Draco had always been weak.

"Had enough, then?"

He looked over through blurred eyes. The old man. "More than enough. I think something broke inside me."

"That happens when you open yourself to art," the old man said. "It is perplexing- how a stroke of charcoal can obliterate you."

"It's not just charcoal." Draco's eyes roamed the canvas as he blinked rapidly to clear them. "It's… The emotions behind it. Muggles might not have magic- but they have something that allows them to channel their feelings into this. Wizards only do portraits…"

The old man smiled. "That is because a battle-scene in live action would be too grotesque to watch again, and again, and again. You know this. Now, come with me- there is one more thing I must show you."

The old man vanished into the crowd and Draco hurried after him. He had the odd urge to search poetry for this feeling, this… Detachment from what he witnessed and who he was. There was a word for it, but what was it-

Disillusionment.

The war was over and the good side had won, but Draco had not been on the good side.

Draco hurried through the crowd, trying to swallow down the thoughts that throbbed painfully in his chest. The old man had listened to him moan and complain all morning and had confronted Draco with some hard truths that Draco hadn't exactly wanted to hear. When it was apparent Draco wasn't absorbing these truths, the old man had brought him here, to the Guildhall Art Gallery, to show him. He had done too well.

They stepped out of the Guildhall Art Gallery and the old man led Draco down the steps and into a small alleyway. Before Draco could blink, the old man had grabbed his arm and Apparated. Draco flinched as the usual suffocating feeling and blur of images consumed him, but it was over quickly. When it ended, they stood on a rocky mountaintop.

A wind whipped by and Draco quickly knelt against it. The wispy old man smiled down at him.

"Don't be afraid," the old man said. "Fear is your enemy. Now- stand up."

Draco slowly did, and the old man patted Draco's back.

"Have I led you astray so far, young man?"

"N-no, sir."

"Good. Then do this one more thing, and I think you'll really set yourself free."

Draco met the man's twinkling blue eyes- not like Dumbledore's, he'd realized as the day went on, but more like his own if they had life in them- and nodded.

"Scream. Just open your mouth and let the sound come out."

Draco creased his eyebrows, and then turned his face to the wind, opened his jaws, and went, "Ahhh."

"No, not like that," the old man grumbled, shaking his head. "Like this."

The old man turned his face to the sky, stretched out his arms so his sleeves billowed in the gusting winds, and then screamed. It was a sound of pain and loathing and longing and continued long into the breeze. When the old man had finished, his eyes pricked with tears.

"Go ahead. It will set you free."

Draco took a deep breath, glanced at the old man, and then took a few steps forward. He extended his arms as the old man had, but his suit still pressed tight against his ribs. He looked down at it, and then began to unbutton the coat. But it was taking too long- something desperate and wild built in his chest- Draco ripped it open and flung off the coat. For a heartbeat, it flapped away in the wind, and then disappeared into the clouds. Draco held out his arms once more, free this time, and felt the bristling wind bite his cheeks and sting his eyes. He stared into the eyes of the swirling gray clouds, threw open his mouth-

And screamed.

The sound shrieked out of him like lightning and flashbacks, as always, racked his mind. But these were not the flashbacks he squashed down, not the ache he swallowed away. Every feeling of self-loathing and disillusionment and drowning surfaced then and emerged in a single, wailing song, and all his anger and bitterness and despair had somewhere to go.

And for a moment, as he ran out of breath, his throat was hoarse and his lungs heaved and his face strained against the feelings and his eyes burned and-

And he was free.

He felt no pain or loathing. He only felt the wind and the hot tears in his eyes.

He glanced around, and the old man was gone.

ooo

The next afternoon, Draco sat in a familiar teashop, in a familiar booth, and sipped rosehip tea that did nothing to help him heal. For the first time in years, he had been breathing. He had slept last night on a park-bench again, but this time chose a quieter side of town. He read the Daily Prophet as the cafe's sleepy owner read some muggle book behind the counter. The Ministry had just placed a new set of guards around Azkaban. Hermione Granger had set a new revision to the law for employment of sub-human creatures- the phrasing was now changed to non-human magical beings and wages were required even for house-elves. Draco snorted, remembering SPEW. Fourth year had been… An adventure. He shuddered to remember being turned into a ferret; after talks with his Aunt Andromeda, he had actually come to respect the late Mad-Eye Moody.

"Draco?"

During his silent contemplation, Draco had missed the approaching footsteps announcing his visitor. He looked up with wide crystalline eyes- to see gold-flecked walnut-brown.

"Astoria!"

He banged his knee jumping up from the table so fast and managed to not-quite-gracefully half-bow to her. "Sorry, er- good afternoon."

She raised her eyebrows, her eyes taking in his tattered suit, unkempt hair, and painless smile. "Draco- are you quite alright?"

"I have never been better. I'm glad you're here, actually- I think I met God. I wanted to talk to you about it."

Her eyebrows shot up higher. "Sorry, what?"

"This old man showed me art and took me to a mountaintop-"

"Draco." She placed a hand on his shoulder. "Is this all because I said no the other night? Because I've thought about that and- anyway." She took a deep breath. "Your mother is searching everywhere for you. She's worried out of her mind. Why haven't you been home?"

He smiled down at her. "That's not home to me. This-" his eyes roamed the teashop. "-This is. This serene freedom, away from all the pain I grew up with. That black manor where the walls seep dark memories, that's not home."

She sighed, and took his hand. "Come on, Draco- you at least need to talk to your mother. Running away isn't the answer."

Looking into her eyes, he believed her, and he was so at peace with himself, so full of his own tranquility, that he didn't worry at all about facing his father. "Alright, let's go, then."