A/N: This is a little gift fic for birdsofshore (set in the Sleeping Dragon 'verse), in thanks for all the pre-reading and cheerleading she does. She specifically requested the story of how Greg, who makes the briefest of appearances in Sleeping Dragon, finds redemption. If you haven't read that, there might be mini-spoilers, so just be warned. Also, go read it! It is a sort of sweet/angsty/hurt/comfort kind of fic, about memory loss and love, and it is one of the best things I've written: I promise you'll like it. Reviews always welcome.

This isn't Drarry, although there are hints of it around the edges (Sleeping Dragon is Drarry, though, as is most of what I write).

Thanks to Evilgiraffe82 for the speedy beta. Any mistakes remaining are my own.

The Redemption of Gregory Goyle - Part One

Before he first left for Hogwarts, Greg had been given clear instructions by his father to attach himself as soon as possible to Draco Malfoy.

"I know that he can be an insufferable little turd, Greg, but the Malfoys are our best bet for security. Lucius has proven that he survives well through good times and bad, and there are worse alliances for us to make."

The Sorting Hat had placed him in Slytherin without a moment's hesitation: anyone whose life was as plotted out as Greg's couldn't be in any other house.
Over the years, Greg and Vince had fallen easily into the roles of mindless minions, stupid sidekicks, gormless goons. There was a certain sense of security in knowing that he was needed, but never required to think for himself. After a while, he didn't even try. Occasionally, he would let Malfoy, or whoever else was talking, prattle on about their plans or their pride, and he would nod and grunt as required, but really would be looking at the way the flames flickered in the fire place, or the clouds moved across the sky. To be honest, these simple things were often more interesting. He knew, of course he knew, that he had a reputation as being slow. He didn't mind though, because it was one way to avoid being seen as a threat. And in Slytherin, being seen as a threat was not a good thing at all.

Greg knew that his father's advice had been good. Every time he looked in the mirror he could see that his family's alliances wouldn't be made on looks; there would be no grand Goyle weddings, no social butterflying for him. It had all been working well right up until the wall of flames had leapt up in the Room of Requirement. As Vince had fallen away, as he and Malfoy had been saved by Potter and Weasley, Greg could see that everything was changing. The Dark Lord's death, a few hours later, had come as no surprise.

After the war, he and his family retreated away as far as they could. His father, like the fathers of all his friends, ended in Azkaban, from where he would pen letters which were at first stoic, but which began to grow faintly desperate before trailing off to a brief birthday message once a year. Greg mourned for his father's liberty and his mind, but knew there was nothing he could do.

He and his mother lived in a small house in the Midlands, and Greg grew to like his quiet life, free of goon-duties. He performed months of community service, rebuilding Hogwarts and the many homes and shops which had been damaged by Death Eaters. The more destruction he saw, the more he began to actually think about what he'd been involved in, and the less he liked it.

Slowly, the mood in the country changed, serious discussion and sombre words being replaced by a reckless party atmosphere as the generation who'd had their teen years cut short decided to catch up on all they'd missed. Greg resisted for a while, but in the end moved to London and found his former housemates enjoying late nights, drink and loud music. There was more going on, of course, but Greg's tastes remained simple.

When he bumped into Malfoy again, he was shocked by what he saw. First of all, Malfoy was laughing, his head thrown back and mouth wide open. Secondly, he had his arm around Harry Potter's waist. He bought Greg a drink and apologised for being a prick to him. Greg could barely make out the words, as his brain struggled to catch up with the sight of Malfoy's fingers gently stroking the back of Potter's neck. By the time Malfoy was insisting that he call him Draco, and inviting him back for more drinks at the home he and Harry shared, you could have told Greg that Dumbledore had come back from the dead and was dressed in a bikini while dancing with a chicken, and he wouldn't have been surprised; anything seemed possible in that moment.

It turned out that without their family's expectations crushing common sense and their innate personalities, many of the Slytherins were actually quite nice people, and popular too. Thanks to Draco's insistence, Greg signed up for a wizard-Muggle volunteering stint, and found himself buying cat food and beer for Bernard, who never wore socks and lived in a house lined with books. Bernard was incredibly bad-tempered, but compared to his years as a goon, being talked down to and ignored, it wasn't too bad. Greg began to read aloud from Bernard's books, slowly, but carefully. According to Bernard, you could hear each word being savoured as Greg read. And he was, indeed, savouring the words. It was as if the moments in which he had quietly watched the world around him had been seen by others, and suddenly Greg felt less alone.

One day, he arrived to find the books packed up. Bernard was moving to a nursing home near his daughter's house, and although it would have been easy enough for Greg to continue visiting, thanks to Apparition, he couldn't really without breaking the Statute of Secrecy. When he said goodbye, Bernard thrust a book into his hands. Greg only looked through it after Bernard had gone; it was a journal, blank, except for the line 'Greg, fill this with your own words: I have a suspicion that you have things to say.' Greg kept the book by his bedside for a month before deciding to write in it. Within two months it was full, and he had to buy a new one: once he had started writing, it had been like floodgates opening and hundreds of words poured out. He described the quiet moments and the hidden beauties of each day. He wrote about his father, alone and lost for words in his cell. He described the physical space he occupied in the world.

It was Pansy who read the poems, and gently encouraged him to get them published. And so, Gregory Goyle, against all expectations, became a poet, his first book dedicated to a Muggle who would never read his poems.

Shaving
By Gregory Goyle

Familiar valleys greet me
Their sadness clear
Each tiny imperfection amplified,
Until all I see are the scars, the pits, the endless
Broken edges
As I stretch skin taut over the lumpen ridges
Of a jaw set
By years of growls
Grunts
Mindless, thoughtless
Empty.

No gentle words
No loving caress
To define the angles of my face
No soft-mouthed kiss to centre
Me

The razor moves in clean lines
The raw scrape
A punishment
But then the cliff edge falls
Down to the sea
And years collect in each crevice
Until the landscape holds me
In its shadows

Freshly scraped
Skin over bone tells
The story of a life