Crawl Across This World
One-shot

Draco never went back to Hogwarts after the war was over. The last time he saw the castle, it was in shambles, some places still burning as bodies lay spread out over the grounds. Death Eaters. Students. Guilty. Innocent.

He thought of the fire that took Crabbe and choked as a lump formed in his throat. Goyle was lost now, broken at the loss of his best friend, and Draco blamed himself. Blamed himself for pulling them along with him and for the hand he'd played in it all. On his best days, he hated himself for bringing the bumbling duo—dimwitted and clumsy, but still important to him—with him into the Room of Requirement. On his worst, he thought he may as well have killed Vince himself.

Convicted Death Eaters or not, Vince's parents never even had a body to bury.

Greg never got to say goodbye and Draco knew he'd never forgive himself.

Blaise whispered that it wasn't his fault, that people died in war, but as Pansy sobbed and let Greg bury his face in her chest, Draco called him a liar.

"Will you go back?" Pansy asked later, her voice hoarse.

"No. Will you?"

She didn't. No Slytherin in their year did went back to Hogwarts. Some transferred to other schools. Others called for private tutors. A handful of them simply gave up and disappeared as if they'd never existed at all.

Draco watched the train leave that September, standing back against a pillar with muggle sunglasses obscuring his face and a knitted cap covering his hair. No one looked at him twice, but he took in everyone.

Longbottom carried himself differently now, confident and brave like Gryffindors were supposed to be. Lovegood moved like she was floating, her hair so light that he knew people mistook the color for his at a quick glance. They relaxed when they realized it wasn't.

He watched Potter and Weasley hug Granger before she stepped onto the train alone. The rumors were true, then. The Boy Wonder and his sidekick weren't returning, probably off to auror training like the whispers said.

He should have expected Granger would go back with or without them.

He screwed up his nose as she kissed Weasley, their movements fumbling and awkward, and let himself snort. They were no better than he and Pansy had been, lost in a childish infatuation that didn't live up to expectations when it actually happened. Same as them. Same as the awkwardness as Potter hugged Girl Weasley goodbye and saw her off.

He doubted any of them knew what to do once the adrenaline of the war had faded and they had no excuses to drag out the courtship.

He half-expected Potter to spot him when they walked past to leave the platform, but he never looked at him once. Tired. War-torn. He was still recovering, same as most of them and same as the school Draco knew he wouldn't see again.

He tried not to look back when he left. Tried not to think about the homes he'd lost or the lives that had been destroyed. Tried not to think about his mistakes and the prejudices he still hadn't let go of.

"What will you do now?" Blaise asked later, staring at him sadly over a cup of steaming tea.

"I don't know."

In the end, he wandered. He left London—left England entirely—and lost himself in it. Raised in England, schooled in Scotland. He'd vacationed in France with his parents years ago, but the villa had been boarded up and left to gather dust as he got older. He never found out why they hadn't gone back. His father—shut away in Azkaban as he was now—had loved that house as much as his mother did.

He drifted through Ireland with alcohol-scented breath and a taste on his tongue that was far different than the liquors he was used to. Muggle alcohol was nothing like wizard, he thought one night as he threw up on the pavement of an alley in Dublin.

No one paid him any attention and he wondered if muggles simply didn't care or if the strange box of hair color he'd used had truly served its purpose.

He thought he looked idiotic as a brunette, missed the white-blond he'd had his whole life. Too noticeable. Too distinctive. There had been people calling for his arrest when he left London and, some days, he might have even agreed with them. He didn't know what waited for him back home.

He wasn't sure he wanted to find out.

He made it to Australia on impulse in December, aching for somewhere else. It had seemed like the best option—the farthest—option as he paid a downtrodden witch to make him a portkey out of a cheap thing he'd nicked out of a muggle gift shop in Paris. The Eifel Tower hung from a little chain, the metal warm as she handed it back to him.

"It's set to go off in ten minutes. I'd get somewhere private," she told him. "Why not make it yourself?"

"Don't have my wand," he answered vaguely, but the truth was that he'd never gotten a new one. He'd returned his mother's to her after the war, but with his old one—his beloved wand he'd had since he was eleven—lost to Potter and his own shame keeping him from returning to Ollivander's…

He was barely a wizard anymore.

He wasn't sure what city he'd fallen into when the portkey deposited him, but the sun was beating so hot that his skin was red within the hour. He was dizzy by the third, slumped down on the side of the road until a boy in neon-colored shorts pressed a bottle of water into his hand.

"Gotta stay hydrated."

He nodded absently, watching as the teen disappeared. Alone again. Somehow, he liked it better that way.

He made a home there—as much as he thought he ever could—shacked up with a couple of boys that spent too much time on the beach and left him alone. He lived as a muggle, accepting the self-imposed exile from his world.

Televisions confused him until they became oddly fascinating.

Microwaves still scared him.

He crashed a car into a mailbox minutes after his roommate tried to teach him and never got behind the wheel again.

He found a job in a book store, full of stories he'd never read, and lost himself in the quiet comfort. Madame Pince would have pitched a fit if someone had tried to play the quiet rock tunes the store played, but she wasn't there and BookEnds wasn't Hogwarts.

Months after, he was bent over a copy of A Midsummer Night's Dream when he heard the familiar tone of an English accent instead of Australian. His head jerked up, eyes wide as he searched the store in some half-panicked attempt to see if it was a threat. Maybe they'd decided to arrest him, tracked him down somehow. He'd stopped dying his hair a month after he settled and cut his hair short so he could let it regrow fresh. It hung in his eyes now and he pushed it back when he finally spotted the couple over by the classics.

They spoke quietly, never once looking at him, and he realized they were muggles. It'd become so easy to tell the difference. The way they carried themselves. The comfort in the world. Even muggleborns changed once they'd entered the wizarding world, taught how to conceal a wand and careful about what they said in public.

These were just muggles.

They bought a stack of books so tall, it looked like a kid preparing for their first year at Hogwarts and the man slipped a cassette—David Bowie, Draco noticed, his Space Oddity album—on top, looking sheepish. "The last one wore out," he told his wife, like he had to justify it while she shook her head fondly. He got the feeling this wasn't the first time it had happened.

Draco chuckled softly as he rang it up. "It's a good one," he commented lightly. He'd listened his way through the shop's collections as he taught himself about muggle music, surprised at how much he liked. Some references were still lost on him, but the rhythms were appealing. "You got a favorite?"

"Letter to Hermione."

Draco didn't think they saw the way he stiffened. "Bit of a depressing song, isn't it?"

"Only if you listen to it the way Bowie intended. Certain parts, though, you can take it differently."

He slipped a copy of Shakespeare's A Winter's Tale into the bag and remembered Queen Hermione of Sicily. He wondered if they had a thing for the name. "How do you look at it, then?"

"A father letting his daughter go," he said, suddenly somber. His wife sighed his name and he pushed half a smile onto his face. "But that's simply my interpretation."

Draco nodded, something nagging at him as he dropped a book of Greek mythology into the bag. He tried to keep his eyes down, focused on their purchase, but he glanced up like he was searching for something.

Pansy had heard overheard Granger and the other two talking days after the war ended, holed up in the Three Broomsticks as she'd shuffled her way out. Weasley asking her if she'd go return her parents' memories now and Granger's quiet sigh.

"She said she'd lost track of them. She'd put them on course for Australia, but something in the spell might have gone wrong. They aren't where she'd meant for them."

Memory spells were tricky. He'd seen plenty of them cast over the years. The intention was as important as the conviction and if even a small part of her hadn't wanted to let them go, the spell could have backfired. There was a reason people weren't meant to cast the spell on family. One needed to be firm in the choice. Family rarely was.

She looked like them, he noticed when he glanced up at them instead of at the books. Something churned in his gut and he felt a lump full of nerves form in his throat. Of all the rotten luck…

It couldn't be them.

Something in him knew it was.

Let them go, he told himself. They hadn't asked about his accent and he hadn't asked about theirs. Sydney was a big place. Chances were that he'd never see them again.

He did. They became regulars at the shop, drifting in every couple weeks. Monica curled up in a corner chair every Saturday with a coffee and a book that reminded him of when he'd pass Granger in the library. Wendell talked to him, going on about Greek mythology and David Bowie as if Draco hadn't only just been learning about either.

They never had a child together, Wendell told him one day as he cast a sad look at his wife, but if they had, he'd wanted to name her Hermione.

Draco thought he might throw up.

He bought a new wand in April, ten inches and made of a sandalwood that felt different in his hand than his old hawthorn one had. The unicorn hair core was still the same and he sighed when it responded to him. It felt like coming home.

Not the same as his old one, but he wasn't the same either. Hawthorn wands spoke of wizards living through times of turmoil. He wondered if his was over.

He apparated to the manor for the first time since he'd left that world, eyes closed as he thought of his father's library.

It was dusty when he appeared, closed up as if it hadn't been touched since his father was jailed. His eyes burned at the reminder, but he pushed the emotions back and went for the shelves instead.

He was gone before his mother ever knew he'd come back and he tried not to hate himself for it.

He simply wasn't ready.

Weeks. He spent weeks staring at the book he'd taken and thinking about his options. It was better—safer—for him to keep his head down and simply let things continue as they had, but something gnawed at him. Regret. Redemption.

He thought of Granger at the manor, laid out on the floor and screaming as his Aunt Bellatrix carved words into her arm. The memories haunted him so much that he called out of work the next Saturday, simply so he wouldn't have to look at Wendell and Monica and eyes that were too familiar.

He spent that day sitting on the floor of his room, staring at the faded Dark Mark on his arm and at the scars of the word Bellatrix had left him with. Coward. She'd relished in his screams the same way she had with Granger, taunting him that if he'd been braver, he could have completed his assignment without Snape's help.

"Little coward Draco. Don't live up to your name, do ya? Do ya?"

He didn't. He didn't live up to the strength his name implied. He was no dragon. Years ago, he thought he may have been as he strutted around Hogwarts, but a façade wasn't strength. It was an act, as fictional and rehearsed as the Shakespeare plays that lined his little bookshelf at home.

He gave them their memories back on a Saturday in May and bore their frantic questions as they asked about their daughter.

Yes, she was alive.

Yes, the Dark Lord was dead.

No, he wasn't her friend. He'd just wanted to do the right thing for once in his life.

He took them back to England the day the train came back from Hogwarts and watched from the same pillar he'd leaned against in September. He watched them wait for her, calling her name the second she stepped off. He saw her pale and the way she darted towards them, barreling into her father's chest.

He watched them cry and wondered if this was what it felt like to do something good.

He left without saying goodbye to them or waiting for a thanks. He didn't want it. He'd thought he would, thought he'd relish in the glory of doing something Granger hadn't managed to do, but he didn't want it. The realization was as shocking as anything and he chuckled to himself as he apparated back to Sydney.

It felt like closing a book on the darkest chapter of his life.

He toasted to Vince that night and thought he may have found peace with that too.

Monica and Wendell didn't come back to the shop, but he hadn't expected them to. They had their memories and their daughter back. Their lives were in England. They had their choice, the same way he had his. They were moving on. It was a good thing.

The bell tolled at door one day in August, but he didn't look up from the box he was unpacking in the history section. "Be with you in a minute."

"I don't suppose you have Hogwarts: A History, do you?"

He didn't jump, but his head jerked at the words as eyes landed on Granger. She smiled down at him like he didn't think she ever had before. He'd never given her a reason to. "Not that kind of shop," he told her stiffly as he stood.

"I didn't believe them, you know," she said. "It never made sense how a stranger would know they had missing memories."

"How'd you figure it out?" he asked, looking over her shoulder and towards the door like he was expecting a team of aurors to come swooping in.

"I came alone," she told him and he remembered that she'd always been smart. Just barely smarter than him, but enough to best him in all their classes. She knew what he was thinking and he wondered why the thought didn't make him recoil.

He wondered how much he'd changed without realizing.

"You didn't answer my question."

"They talked about you a lot. I figured it out," she said. "It took a little time for me to realize Drake was Draco." She tilted her head. "You wanted to sound muggle."

"My name raises a few eyebrows," he reminded her. He wondered if she remembered the way Potter sniggered at his name their very first day at Hogwarts. Wondered if she'd heard or if Potter had told her. It wasn't as if Potter had been the only one to laugh at it, anyway.

She hummed softly, fingers skimming along the spines of a few books. Her nails were painted green. "Why?" Why did he do it? Why did he give them back to her?

"I didn't do it for you," he said, simple but not unkind either. He hadn't. He'd done it for him and for the couple that had somehow become something that almost felt like friends.

"I didn't think you did," she agreed. "You're different."

"Possibly."

"Draco Malfoy is working in a muggle bookstore," she said. He didn't need to look at her to hear the amused smile. "That sounds plenty different to me."

He shrugged. "Why'd you come?"

"To thank you."

"I don't want it."

"I still want to say it."

He looked at her, frizzy hair calmed to curls that looked almost pretty and a golden lion pendant hanging around her neck. She looked better, he thought—healed—and wondered when he started thinking of people like that. Healed. Whole.

Maybe that was how one looked at someone after going through a war.

He wondered how he looked to her.

"So… Thank you."

He didn't want it, but he nodded anyway. "Shouldn't you be getting back to Weasley?"

"No," she said and it implied everything it needed to. Everything he'd thought when he watched the train leave that September morning. "I was actually looking for a David Bowie album. Space Oddity. My dad needs a new one."

He snorted. "Again?"

"He likes the first side of the tape."

She stayed for hours after he'd handed her the cassette, curled up in the same chair that her mother would sit in. She drank hot chocolate instead of coffee, picked up from the little shop around the corner, and brought him one too.

He sat with her sometimes, cross-legged on the floor as he flipped through a book. They didn't talk about the war or people left behind. She'd go back and he wouldn't, but there was a calm as they seemed to find common ground. The animosity was gone, lost somewhere between the war and her parents coming home.

He'd hated her in school, leaning on the prejudices he'd been taught and his own immaturity. Too young to realize that he should have enjoyed the challenge her smarts offered him instead of sneering at where she'd come from.

They didn't talk about it, but he thought she knew. Thought he saw it in the way she smiled at him.

She apparated to Sydney every Saturday after that, situating herself in that same chair, and they became something that felt like friends.

She visited on a Friday in December, slipping in as he closed up early for Christmas Eve. "I'll be with my parents tomorrow. You should see your mum."

He waved her towards her chair and sat down beside it the way he always did. "She's coming here. She got a house."

Her eyebrows inched up, surprised, even though she'd been the one to push him into contacting his mother again. "She's moving?"

"The manor doesn't have the same appeal it used to."

She didn't say anything, but her eyes looked like she agreed.

He handed her a wrapped box as she stood to leave and didn't offer an explanation. Didn't need to. She smiled and enlarged the one she'd been keeping in her pocket.

They bought each other the same book—Great Expectations—and laughed.

She hit his chest softly.

His hand fell on her hip.

They stared.

He broke first, coughing as he stepped away. "Happy Christmas."

"Happy Christmas, Draco."

He didn't expect her to come for the new year, but she caught him as she closed up that Friday on New Year's Eve as they prepared for the new millenium. A pretty dress. Her hair done up in careful curls. He felt shabby in his jeans and t-shirt, but she shook her head at him and said it didn't matter.

"Going to a party after?"

"No."

They danced to a quiet tune that turned into a faster one. It left them both laughing as he spun her around, her dress flared out around her. She crashed into his chest, arms up around his neck, and their laughing faded off.

They stared.

The crackling radio counted down the seconds to the new year.

Three.

They smiled.

Two.

Their voices softened.

One.

She breathed the number against his lips and his hands tightened on her hips.

She kissed him when it hit zero and he kissed back like something in his life finally made sense.

"Happy New Year," she whispered when he pressed his forehead to hers after.

"It won't be the new year in London for another nine hours."

"Celebrate with me again?"

They didn't go back to London for it. They went to his flat and set the alarm for five minutes before nine.

The radio woke them up, as crackly as the one at the bookstore, and Hermione reached to turn it up a little, his sheet held against her chest. He drew it away as she laid back down.

"What are we doing?" she asked as he kissed her way down her neck.

He didn't know and he didn't think she did either, but it felt something like starting over. His fingers buried in what had been reduced to messy curls. Her nails raking across his shoulder blades.

He didn't look at the scar on her arm and she didn't ask about the one above the Dark Mark on his.

He looked at her, smiling as they counted down towards their second New Year.

He kissed her when they hit zero that time.

She kissed back.

Neither of them came up for air for a while.

The End