Do I need to be starting on another story? No, I definitely don't. But the idea came to me and it wouldn't let me sleep. Therefore...voila! Let me know what you think. I haven't decided any pairings yet, but there won't be any slash. Mostly because Harry and Draco are straight.

Disclaimer: I am not J.K Rowlings. She owns the Harry Potter series and all its affiliates.

Note: This chapter has been EDITED. Nothing big, I just smoothed out some things and trimmed passages I thought were dangerously close to monologue.

The Battle of Hogwarts raged.

"And that's the second time we've saved your life tonight, Malfoy!"

Draco Malfoy picked himself up off the ground and spat blood onto the white marble, cursing the decisions that had led him to this moment. The Malfoys had been promised glory and dominion. Why then, was his mother terrified to sleep in her own home? His father a broken man, their fortune squandered, the family name besmirched? Why did he find himself kneeling helpless in the rubble, molested by his allies and pitied by his enemies?

Such were the promises of a madman.

Draco would have laughed, if not for fear that the noise might attract some Death Eaters bored enough to want to stop and torture an insane Hogwarts student.

Blood dripped from his split lip to form little rust-colored constellations in the dust. He'd seen plenty of blood by now, but he never felt any magic in it. Just the slickness of it on his hands. He was tired, so tired of cowering and begging and looking over his shoulder. But if he lay down here, he would be caught and punished. Draco clambered to his feet and began to walk, stumbling often over debris, bodies, and his torn robes. Most of the fallen were Death Eaters, which gave him an obscure sense of satisfaction, but many were students.

The Dark Lord was supposed to have fixed everything. To have purged the wizarding world of the weak, stupid fools holding them in the Dark Ages. It was supposed to be the Mudbloods' fault, their Muggle ancestry diluting the strength of magical blood.

Ridiculous, a realization that had taken far too long coming. The number of magical families wiped out in this war was surely a greater loss than the tiny dilutions of a few Mudbloods. Those tiny leaks could have been stoppered, controlled with laws and proper education. Patience and subtlety, a Slytherin's proper tools. There had been no need for his proud father to writhe in the dirt, screaming for the Dark Lord's mercy. No need for Crabbe, who had once bloodied Theodore Nott's nose for rubbing Draco's hair in the dirt, to burn with cursed flame.

Draco came across one of the Weasel twins, eyes wide and empty, his pale, freckled face wiped of the laughter that he had exhibited in life. He found Professor Lupin too, sprawled near a woman with bubble-gum pink hair and a wedding ring that gleamed gold on her too-white finger.

At some point while Draco wandered among the dead, Voldemort's high, cold voice echoed along the ruined corridors: "You have fought valiantly."

Had they? Was the Dark Lord actually praising them? No, it was the defenders he addressed now. Patronizing them before the final blow.

"Harry Potter….You have permitted your friends to die for you…I shall wait one hour….Come to me…"

Potter. He wanted Potter, of course. And Potter would go, because he'd never been able to stop himself from playing the hero. Draco wandered to a window with a view of the lawn and waited. Not long now, and then it would end.

…

The body of Harry Potter seemed a pitiful thing in the half-giant's arms. Strange that a boy who had loomed so large in Draco's life would seem so inconsequential in death. An unworthy end to the famously powerful Potter line.

Draco turned away and let his feet lead him. He shouldn't have been surprised when he found himself before the Room of Requirement. It had been his sanctuary last year while he repaired the cabinet that would bring about the beginning of the end. Or the middle of it, for he supposed that the night in the graveyard was the beginning. Or maybe the moment the Potters were killed. Whatever.

Aimlessly, he paced before the wall. There was a soot-stained outline of a door on it now, residue from the Fiendfyre. The Room's magic was probably gone. He paced anyway.

This isn't what I wanted. It's such a waste, such a stupid ending. I…I wish I had done it differently, taken any one of a hundred, of a thousand different paths. I wish I could go back and fix it, save my family. I wish none of this had ever happened.

It happened slowly, a gradual blurring of the door-shaped outline, then a softening and a hardening and a darkening. It was not a door that formed, just a jagged hole leading into blackness, but Draco was surprised, in a distant sort of way, that it had worked at all. He surveyed the blackness with detached curiosity. Definitely damaged. It would probably kill him, but then, continuing to wander the halls of Hogwarts without a wand would probably kill him too. The Dark Lord would certainly get around to it, sooner or later. Draco stepped through the hole and fell into nothing.

…

Darkness swallowed him, sliding across his skin like ink. He saw nothing, heard nothing, felt nothing except the warm pressure of the dark he floated in.

Child of Slytherin's House, you are a fool.

I know, he thought, I did everything wrong.

Indeed, your actions have been misguided. However, it is your lack of faith that is truly foolish. You come thinking me broken, bleating repentant words…but hoping only to die.

Excuse me?

Have I not hidden you? Sheltered you? Assisted you in your time of need? Yet now, in this darkest of hours, you assume I have abandoned my children. Foolish.

I—I apologize. The Room of Requirement has done all I asked and more. I am simply...I can think of nothing within my power to undo what I have wrought.

But within MY power, all things are possible. Choose well, little dragon, and you may save all my children.

And suddenly Draco was rushing through the darkness, or perhaps it was rushing past him. His robes were torn away first, then his skin. He screamed—or tried to—as layers of the person he'd become were scraped away to expose the one he had once been. He felt a final sort of thump, as if he'd been thrown into a pile of pillows, and he sat down hard. Opening his eyes, he saw the vaulted ceiling of Hogwarts' entrance hall stretching high above him, whole and unmarred.

Screams echoed somewhere behind him, but they were the laughing shrieks of children, not the agonized cries of the dying. He turned his head and saw the ghosts of Hogwarts filtering through the solid stone, their silvery, translucent faces hiding smiles at a group of exuberant first years.

Why are there first years here? This is a battlefield, he thought dazedly as he pushed himself to his feet. Or tried to. His limbs weren't responding like they should.

"Malfoy? You alright, mate?"

Draco froze. Then a pudgy figure shuffled into view, piggy eyes squinting at his friend.

"Crabbe?" His voice was higher than it should have been, the thin, reedy tones of a child, and it cracked a little saying the name of his childhood friend. His dead childhood friend. Draco reached up to touch his face, nearly poking himself in the eye when his fingers were shorter than he remembered.

His nose was small and pointed, his cheeks soft with baby fat, and his hair was slicked back against his head. He stared at his hands: tiny, with smooth palms and short, chubby fingers. He looked at Crabbe, who was alive, and Goyle, who was staring at Draco as if he'd lost it (he probably had), and the surrounding group of first years still wondering at the ghosts' appearance.

Then he began to laugh. His voice rang with hysteria, but he didn't try to stop himself. What was the point of being mad if he didn't get to act like it? It wasn't like these delusions were going to tell on him.

"Malfoy," Crabbe muttered. "Everyone's starin'."

It was true. The first years had fallen silent and were staring at him now, wide-eyed and whispering. Dimly, he recognized Potter in the crowd, blinking at this paradigm shift in the personality of his new nemesis.

"Move aside now, students, move aside." McGonagall appeared, looking not a whit different than she had in class this morning. Couldn't his imagination have at least given her a funny hat or something?

"Mr. Malfoy, are you quite alright?" she asked, gazing severely over the rims of her glasses. "You are a Malfoy, correct? You're the spitting image of Lucius."

He nodded, and she seemed to take that as a yes to both questions.

"Nerves, I'm sure," she told the assembled crowd. "Quite common before the Sorting." A flask appeared in her hand, and the students gasped as if she'd conjured it, but she'd merely pulled it from her sleeve. "A Calming Drought," she explained, and under her stern scrutiny, he dared not refuse it.

Immediately, the laughter ceased to bubble in his throat, and logic reasserted itself. Relief and disbelief and underneath it all, so deep he was able to mostly forget, the guiltguiltguilt-it all faded into a pleasant dreaminess, and he was able to think. He didn't feel crazy. He extended his magical senses and felt nothing. If he was trapped in an illusion, it was a damn good one.

Choose well, little dragon.

Time travel? he mused. Such things were possible, but rare, oh so incredibly rare. It was far more likely he'd gone insane. Still…he might as well enjoy this dream while it lasted. Play around a little. He wasn't getting his hopes up. Not at all.

His gaze zeroed in on a scrawny green-eyed boy who kept flattening his unruly black hair down to cover his forehead, and the wheels in his clever mind started turning.

The first years were lining up in alphabetical order. Ahead of him, he saw the Mudblood—no, Granger, he had to start thinking of her as Granger—was muttering spells and facts to herself at top speed. He hadn't run into her on the train, had he? She would have no opinion of him yet.

He checked to see that McGonagall was distracted, then darted forward. He nearly tripped twice covering the short distance. Had his legs really been this short before? Was that a detail that an insane person would hallucinate?

"Relax, Granger," he hissed in her ear. "It's not a test. There's a magical hat that looks at your personality and places you in the House that will develop your strengths."

She jumped, and the look she gave him was part suspicion, part irritation, and part relief. It also said very clearly that she didn't appreciate advice from a boy who'd needed a potion to calm his hysterics. But she did stop muttering aloud, and some of the tension eased from her shoulders.

Draco returned to his place, staring intently at everything around him. It seemed real. The pictures on the walls stayed the same no matter how many times he looked. He had five fingers on each hand. He could read, which he tested by reading a note he found in his pocket from Pansy Parkinson. Good luck, Draco! it said. Come sit with me after the Sorting. Had he gotten that note the first time around?

The marble floors had silvery-grey veins running through them. He had never noticed that before, had he? So he couldn't possibly hallucinate it. Or maybe his mind had just made it up altogether. Maybe the real Hogwarts floors were just plain white.

The first years clumped together as much as possible as they entered the Great Hall. Draco finally had to turn and give the boy behind him a Medium Pureblood Glare to stop him treading on his heels.

Things progressed exactly as he remembered: the Sorting Hat sang its stupid song, students with expressions ranging from eager to nauseous approached and were placed into their various houses. Then it was Draco's turn, and the Hat was being placed on his head, was brushing his slicked-back hair.

"SLY—"

WAIT! Draco shouted in the vaults of his mind.

What is it, boy? Everybody's waiting for dinner.

The Sorting Hat's voice was dry and dusty, full of ancient wisdom. It was also rather crotchety.

Draco thought wildly. He had no idea what was really going on, so it was best to plan for the worst. For now, he would play it like the decisions he made here somehow mattered.

I need you to put Potter in Slytherin!

The mental voice grew frosty. I'm afraid I don't take recommendations, little snake, even from time-travelers. Your friend will go where he's suited.

Draco blinked at that. We are not friends!

Ah, but you want him to be, don't you? Isn't that why you're here? You even got Her involved.

There were so many things wrong with the idea of Draco Malfoy wanting to be friends with Harry Potter—even in what were probably his own hallucinations—that he couldn't even think of a reply emphatic enough, so he switched tactics. But he'll die in Gryffindor! If you can see in my head, you know he will.

On the contrary, it seems as if he'll die for a lot of reasons, one being his own self-sacrificial tendencies and another a result of you leading Death Eaters into the castle to kill the only wizard holding Voldemort at bay, therefore hastening his victory. Draco flinched. For a Hat, it was awfully blunt. Do you really expect him to be safe in Slytherin? It continued, where most of Voldemort's supporters are? If anything, he'll be murdered in his sleep.

Draco shut up. That was a good point.

Hufflepuff then, he begged. Or Ravenclaw. I won't be able to get close to him if he's in Gryffindor and I'm in Slytherin. The prejudice runs too deep. I would be in danger as well.

The Hat scoffed. I revise my earlier opinion. You're not clever in the slightest if you can't see the obvious solution.

Excuse me?

You're not the strongest candidate, I admit. Much more inclined to social maneuvering than legendary feats. But She saw something in you, that much is certain. And I suppose it was rather brave choosing to relive it all…

Oh no, Draco thought. Don't you dare!

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Those of you who remember the previous version, leave a comment to let me know what you think of the edits! Do you appreciate the (hopefully) improved quality or wish I'd quit touching things?