Disclaimer for whole story: Do not own.
On a cloudy, starless night in the middle of a particularly rainy August, a teenage boy with a lightning bolt-shaped scar on his forehead sat staring out a grimy window at number twelve, Grimmauld Place. To any outsider, (though no outsider would have been able to see him) he looked much older than his seventeen years. His eyes were bloodshot from either crying or lack of sleep (possibly both) and his skin was a ghostly white save for the slight bags under his eyes which were very dark indeed. His black hair was unkempt, sticking up in odd places as though he'd never seen a comb in his life, nor a mirror. His form was thin and almost fragile looking as he sat hunched over in a stiff wooden chair.
But this boy was not frail, not by any measure. A quiet power flowed through his veins, a power that had driven him thus far in his life through countless tragedies and atrocities and kept him going still, during this particularly bleak and depressing period of his young life. He may have looked quite ghostly and lifeless, but by God…his eyes were alive. The power that flowed in his blood shot right to his pupils, where it ignited like two smoldering green flames. There was something about this boy, some quality, that suggested greatness. A strength of will, of character, of morals. You could see it just by looking at those eyes.
Though, of course, he was unaware of all this. Especially the part about his looks, as he really hadn't seen a mirror in weeks. And if he looked older than seventeen, as we have already established, then he most certainly felt it. No boy could possibly shoulder so much pain, so much responsibility, and still have the strength to stand. No boy could shoulder such a burden, the burden he had carried since a year earlier when Professor Dumbledore revealed the prophecy to him, and still have the courage to get out of bed every morning.
But Harry Potter did have the strength to stand and he did get out of bed every morning. And then he trained. He spent nearly every waking moment thinking of the impending battle with Lord Voldemort. It was a very simple thought process that motivated him: If I don't kill him, I'm going to die. He's powerful. I have to be more powerful than him in order to kill him. I have to work hard to become more powerful than him. Therefore, he had to work hard in order to live.
However, survival was not his only motivator. Not by a long shot. Harry was also motivated by revenge, revenge for the lives of Lily and James Potter and Sirius and Dumbledore. It was like a cold weight in the back of his mind, ever present, ever pressing down. His parents. His godfather. His mentor. All of them slain by, or in the name of, Lord Voldemort.
Harry would kill Lord Voldemort and every single one of his Death Eaters or he would die trying.
This was his life. These thoughts were his mind. He had little else.
And so, it's not hard to imagine why Harry had been so restless as of late. He was confined to his house, this horrible, stuffy house, on orders from the Order of the Phoenix. He felt his whole life was leading up to one single moment with Voldemort, his whole being tingling on the brink of that one encounter, and he had to sit around waiting for it to come. It was unbearable. He was constantly running around the house, flipping through spell books, practicing hexes, looking for someone, anyone, to practice dueling with, ignoring Hermione's pleas for him to "Just calm down!" He couldn't. He couldn't eat, he could barely sleep, and yet, he had boundless energy that yearned to be let loose. But he couldn't leave the bloody house!
This is exactly what Sirius felt like, he had thought several times over the past few weeks since leaving the Dursley's for the last time and coming to set up his residence at Grimmauld Place.
And so, with all this in mind, it was very strange to see Harry sitting quietly in a chair in a darkened room at nearly midnight, just staring blankly out the window. He had come to an impasse. He was weary, bone weary, exhausted from the sheer effort of not going outside. As he looked down at the dark stretch of sidewalk below the window, he wanted nothing more than to feel his feet on it. God, he would give almost anything to feel the sensation of rubber shoe sole on concrete sidewalk. It had been so long. He just wanted to run, just run down the sidewalk with abandon and feel the midnight breeze ruffle his hair, smell the real air instead of the musty odor of Grimmauld Place.
Would it really be so horrible if he just stepped outside for a moment? It wasn't as if there were twenty Death Eaters waiting to jump out at him from the shadows. Grimmauld Place had been relocated to a secret location. And in fact, now that he really looked at the street, it seemed quite peaceful. Quite safe and secure, really. And the sidewalk. God, the sidewalk. It looked like heaven on earth.
He made up his mind. He would go. If anyone saw that he was missing and wanted to skin his hide when he got back, that was fine. But for now, he had a date with a glorious stretch of open sidewalk.
Standing up quietly from the chair, he took his wand from his pocket and muttered a charm to silence his footsteps. Then he walked to his closet, opened the doors silently and pulled his invisibility cloak from the top shelf. Wrapping it around his slight frame and checking to make sure he was completely covered, he made his way to the door and twisted the handle slowly, trying to be silent. He opened it a crack and stuck his head out, checking for any passersby. Seeing no one, he silently stepped into the hallway.
Then he made his way down the stairs, into the darkened, portrait-lined entrance hallway. Glancing left and right to make sure no one was watching, he walked quickly to the front door, savoring the idea that he would be breathing real air in just milliseconds.
He twisted the handle, opened the door just enough to squeeze through, and immediately had to fight the urge to drop to his knees and kiss the ground. Oh, sweet air. He had forgotten what it tasted like, what it smelled like. Or rather, what it didn't smell like. The thought of ever going back inside Grimmauld Place was horrific.
Breathing deeply and walking slowly, he made his way down the sidewalk, his head tilted back to stare at the immensely beautiful, clouded darkness of the sky.
He walked and walked, all of the troubles slowly evaporating from his mind. This was the closest thing he had felt to contentment in a long time. Ever since Dumbledore died. Ever since he ended it with Ginny.
Ginny, he thought, sighing deeply. Merlin, how happy she had made him. How he missed her flaming hair and sparkling eyes and mischievous grin. What he wouldn't give to see her smiling in front of him right now.
You can't see her smiling if she's dead, he thought firmly. Harry had no doubt in his mind that Voldemort would go after Ginny if he knew they were together. This was another motivation for destroying Voldemort, being able to reunite with her. It didn't fill him with grim intensity like survival and revenge did, but spun a kind of soft longing in the pit of his stomach, potent in its own way.
He flashed back to that day beside the lake, when they had talked and kissed for hours and—
He was jolted from his reverie by a stifled scream that issued from an alleyway up ahead.
"What were you thinking, Draco?" spat Severus Snape as he pinned an unresponsive Draco Malfoy by the shoulders to the brick wall of a vacant alleyway. He brought his hand back and slapped Draco hard against the face. "You insulted the Dark Lord! In front of the others! If I hadn't volunteered to punish you myself, they would have torn you limb from limb! And if the Dark Lord had heard you, you would not be alive!"
What a blessing that would be, thought Draco, staring defiantly into Snape's cold eyes.
Snape pulled back his hand and slapped Draco harder. "You're lucky I don't kill you!" he shouted. "Your life is mine, Draco. I saved it by killing Dumbledore for you. You are lucky beyond comprehension that Voldemort didn't murder you for that immense failure!"
Draco's eyes blazed with fury. "Yes, well he murdered my mother and father instead, the fucking bastard," he said in a deadly quiet voice.
Snape curled his hand into a fist and slammed it into Draco's face, causing him to fall onto the filthy pavement. "Does your life mean nothing to you! Don't say such things!" raged Snape. "Would you prefer he had killed all three of you?"
Draco looked up at the greasy, hook-nosed wizard through streaming eyes and a bloody nose and said, "I don't imagine I'd care much, I'd be dead."
Snape's eyes went wide at the boy's insolence. He brought back his heeled foot and kicked it forcefully into Draco's side, audibly cracking several ribs. Draco fell on his side with a muffled scream.
"Do you see this mark?" said Snape, grasping Draco's wrist painfully in his hand and twisting it so Draco could see the Dark Mark. "Does this mean nothing to you?"
Draco, though he could barely breathe, managed to twist his face into a look of disgust. "No, it means something," he wheezed, blood dripping from his mouth. "It means my parents are dead and I'm damned for the rest of my life because of a fucking worthless Dark Lord who was too much of a coward to try and kill Dumbledore on his own."
Snape's nostril's flared. He threw Draco's wrist down and kicked him again, harder, in the same spot, hearing the sickening crunch of bones and flesh.
"Wrong. It means you pledged your allegiance to the Dark Lord," said Snape.
He pulled a dagger from his robes, bent down and shoved it into Draco's side.
"And now you are going to die for betraying that allegiance." He pulled out the dagger forecfully, wiped the blood on Draco's robes, and stored it back in his own. Then he muttered an incantation and pointed his wand at Draco's wrist. Draco felt a searing pain. "You could have been great, Draco Malfoy. But you are not the man your father was. You are a disappointment. Your death will make very little difference to anyone."
With that, Snape raised his wand, turned on his heel, and Disapparated.
Draco let out an animal-like roar of pure rage and despair. Clutching his arms around his broken, painful, bleeding body, he let tears of frustration stream down his face. He had never felt this mentally anguished in his entire life, not even in the months before Dumbledore's death when his whole world had been filled with confusion and angst. In the end, he hadn't killed Dumbledore, and he was eternally grateful for that fact. If he had, it would have made Draco one of them, one of the scum-sucking Death Eaters. And even though he had the Dark Mark, he was not really one of them, not in his mind. After his parents were murdered by Voldemort, he vowed to himself that he would die before he became one of them.
And now here he was, crumpled on the ground in a dirty alleyway, quite sure that death would arrive soon.
"I will never be one of them… NEVER!" he roared, feeling the blinding pain of his injuries flare up with the sudden outburst. "I will…never…bow to the Dark Lord," he said with difficulty, gasping. "I hope he…rots."
He thought back to that night in the astronomy tower, to Dumbledore's offer. If only there had been more time. More time to think. He could have taken Dumbledore up on his offer. He could have saved himself and his parents. But now all was lost and all he had was pain and regret. And soon he would be dying. Soon—
A noise at the end of the alley. Draco's head shot up from the ground.
"Who's there?" he demanded, painfully wrenching his body into a sitting position against the brick wall.
Suddenly, Harry Potter appeared out of thin air right in front of Draco Malfoy.
Harry had heard it all. Draco Malfoy renounced Lord Voldemort, defied Severus Snape. Malfoy's parents, like Harry's, had been killed by Voldemort. And now Draco was crumpled and bleeding against a brick wall in a filthy alleyway.
Harry may have hated Malfoy, but he wasn't about to let him die from wounds inflicted by Snape. He had just rebelled against the two men Harry hated most. That took courage. In the few moments before he revealed himself, Harry felt the slightest hint of something akin to respect for Malfoy, though he didn't immediately identify it as such. It was just a feeling that Malfoy deserved his help, or at least needed it badly enough for Harry to offer it.
And so he dropped his cloak and revealed himself to Malfoy, whose bloodshot eyes popped wide with surprise. He tried to stand, but only managed to shift slightly on the ground and as he let out a painful grunt. He patted his right pant leg with a weak hand and, finding nothing, searched the ground with his eyes, realizing that his wand lay on the ground several feet out of reach.
He looked up at Harry with hateful eyes and spat painfully, "Come to…finish me off…Potter? Now's the time to do it. I have…no wand. I'm broken down. Do what you've…wanted to do since—"
"Shut up, Malfoy," said Harry. "I'm going to help you."
Malfoy was silent for a moment, his face registering surprise. Then his features twisted into a sneer. "Being…noble as always…Potter? I don't want your…fucking help."
Harry regarded him silently for a second. "I heard the conversation, Malfoy. I heard you renounce Voldemort."
Malfoy winced at the sound of the name. "It doesn't mean I've…turned good…idiot. Now…leave me." He closed his eyes and slumped against the wall, becoming weaker by the second.
"No, Malfoy. You're coming with me," he said, starting forward.
"Like…hell…" said Malfoy with difficulty, trying hard to keep his eyes open.
As Harry knelt down beside him, Malfoy's eyes fluttered closed and he slumped onto his side. Harry put a levitation charm on Malfoy and, covering them both with the invisibility cloak, started quickly down the sidewalk to Grimmauld Place.
He barely remembered the trip back, so blurred were his thoughts. He had mixed emotions about saving Malfoy. He flashed back to all the terrible things Malfoy had done over the years, all the pain he had inflicted on Harry and his friends.
But right now, this wasn't "Malfoy". This was a young man caught up in a bad situation, willing to die rather than give in to Voldemort. Willing to die for what he thought was right. How could Harry not understand that? How could he not pity Malfoy? Sure, he was an arrogant, nasty, son-of-a-bitch. But he wasn't an arrogant, nasty, Death Eater, son-of-a-bitch. And that made all the difference.
When Harry stepped through the front door, he saw Lupin and Tonks in the entrance hall deep in conversation. They both looked up. Harry dropped the invisibility cloak.
"Harry, where the hell did you go?" yelled Tonks, not immediately registering Malfoy's presence. Then her mouth dropped open.
Lupin rushed forward. "What is all this? What's going on, Harry?"
"I'll explain in a moment. I'm fine, but Malfoy needs help badly."
"Mal-Malfoy?" spat Tonks. "Help…Malfoy? Why!"
Harry simply brushed past her, levitating Malfoy up the stairs to an empty bedroom on the left. Lupin and Tonks followed him, standing in the doorway as Harry landed Malfoy on top of a bed. "Malfoy isn't with Voldemort anymore," he explained. "Snape left Malfoy to die for renouncing Voldemort and I found him. Now can someone please help!"
"What's going on?" asked a sleepy female voice from the hallway.
Hermione Granger was asleep in her bedroom at Grimmauld Place when she was awoken by footsteps and voices coming from downstairs.
Is it morning already? she thought wearily, sitting up and rubbing her eyes.
She looked out the window and saw darkness. Baffled, she got out of bed, put on a bathrobe, and poked her head into the hallway. She saw Tonks and Lupin standing in the doorway to one of the empty bedrooms and heard Harry speaking agitatedly.
What's got him all riled up at this time of night? she thought. She was getting used to Harry's erratic behavior. It came, she knew, from him being cooped up in this house all the time. She felt sorry for him, sorry enough to stay here at Grimmauld Place with him so he wouldn't be so lonely. Ron was at the Burrow with his family. She missed him terribly, but in an increasingly sisterly way. She knew he felt the same. They had kissed once, a few days before they parted ways, but there was nothing there. After a long, awkward talk, they agreed to remain friends. She wasn't sure if things had gone back to normal yet, as she hadn't seen him since.
Hermione pushed these thoughts aside, stumbled sleepily down the hall, and asked, "What's going on?"
Lupin and Tonks turned around and Hermione saw that Harry was standing over a bloodied body on the bed. She gasped and her eyes popped open, the last traces of sleep vanishing from her mind.
"Hermione, you know some medicine, right?" asked Harry.
"Well…sure, some, but…who—" She stepped into the room and stopped cold in her tracks as she saw the unconscious boy lying on the bed.
Draco Malfoy.