Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns everything to do with Harry Potter and I don't, all I do own is the twisted plot of this story and lots of train tickets.
Author's Note: This is an idea that has been chasing me around for some time ever since I was engaged in a discussion about Draco's future. I admit upfront I am pro redemptionista but someone actually made an interesting point that if Draco is ever redeemed it most likely won't be within the scope of the seven novels. And so the idea for this fic was born.
Summery: Eight since Hogwarts and the fall of Voldemort a new evil is arising. Harry Potter reluctantly calls upon the help of an old enemy to help fight it with unforeseeable consequences.
Rating: R – pretty grim story altogether which may have slash in later chapters, I'm not sure yet.
Rain pounded furiously down upon the tall, dark haired man from the inky black sky, showing him little mercy. It soaked his ebony locks and droplets clung to the lenses on his round glasses, distorting his vision, almost blinding him.
It didn't concern him however for even though it had been many years since Harry Potter had set foot here, he knew his way around the maze-like prison like he knew the back of his hand.
It had been eight years since Harry had fulfilled what all the innocents of the wizarding world had expected of the Boy Who Lived – essentially saving them all from the evil of the Dark Lord Voldemort and therefore bringing order back to the world.
For the longest time Harry had felt that this was an utterly impossible goal that others had set him and that there was no real way a seventeen-year-old boy could defeat a wizard like that. A wizard who had after all murdered his own parents.
But he had. And when he had done so instead of the elation at having avenged his parents and contentment that everything was now over that he had expected to feel Harry had in fact been left with nothing but a bitter emptiness.
He had turned away from the world he loved, still loved now, the place he felt truly at home. The emptiness was a result of Harry feeling...well, that he was finished. He had done what everyone wanted of him, what did he have to offer now?
So he had walked away feeling worse than he had ever felt during the war when he had seen people he cared about deeply maimed and killed. Harry had never thought that could be possible.
I've come back now though.
He walked past a guard and gave him a nod of recognition. So far none had asked what his business was here and Harry strongly suspected someone had already told them that he would be paying them a visit.
He reached a T-Junction and turned left without any hesitation. He was heading in the direction of the row of cells reserved for those incarcerated in solitary confinement.
Where the powerful, potentially dangerous prisoners were kept.
Harry met another wizard guard at the door that led to the cells. Without a word the wizard led him silently down the row to the cell of the prisoner with whom he wished to speak with.
Harry wondered briefly what he would look like. Prison could change people beyond nearly all recognition; he'd seen that for himself in times past. Although this prison was no where near the living hell that Azkaban had been, being kept in almost complete darkness all day every day, never communing with a soul (not even the person who brought him his food and occasionally washed him) must surely be horribly close to it.
And why shouldn't it be so? He deserves nothing less.
The guard stopped at last at what seemed to be the very last room on the row. A single torch was the only illumination supplied and this was not actually located in the cell itself but instead hung in front of the entrance and the light filtered through the grill at the top of the heavy wooden door. Harry knew such conditions were to compensate for the fact that this prison held no Dementors like Azkaban had done. Surely this though had the equal affect of sucking happiness and hope from the people who were held here.
At the very least however, it guaranteed that he'd be willing to listen to Harry.
He thanked the guard who seemed to understand that he had private business with the prisoner and merely unlocked the door for him, handed him the key to lock it again when he was finished and left without another word.
Harry took a deep, steadying breath and awkwardly stepped in to the tiny room. There was barely enough space for the cot, which was the only thing approaching furniture in the cell, and the room's four walls were all an equal shade of depressing grey.
There was moisture glistening on those stone walls and the entire room felt deathly cold.
The prisoner himself was seated tensely on the tiny bed, wrapped in a scraggly, colourless blanket.
No wonder so many prisoners held in solitary confinement had committed suicide in the past. In fact Harry now found it surprising that the prisoner had actually managed to hold out this long, he was hardly a character possessed of a strong will as he recalled.
The prisoner's dull grey eyes slowly took in his visitor, the first visitor he had had in literally years. When he realised Harry's identity something finally flickered to life in those otherwise dead eyes but the fire was extinguished quickly.
He was painfully thin and the ragged robes he wore were beyond filthy. His silver blond hair had actually been kept unusually trimmed, which was odd, but it didn't make up for the fact the once glossy flaxen tresses were now greasy, limp and lifeless.
Just like the man himself.
After a long silence in which they regarded each other the prisoner finally spoke. His voice was utterly different to what Harry had recalled – deep and raspy, like a death rattle. Devoid of the air of superiority it had once held.
"What do you want Potter?" Asked Draco Malfoy with not one shred of discernable emotion.
Draco Malfoy dreamed.
In his dream he was seated in the beautiful, well tended garden of his home with his parents, the aristocratic wizard Lucius Malfoy and his elegant wife Narcissa, on a hot summer day.
Draco was eating sweets from a bowl beside his seat and the sugared treats delighted his taste buds with their divine flavour.
He was younger here somehow, probably fifteen. A time before the rot his father had planted in his son long ago had begun to spread into his heart, devouring him mind, body and soul and turning into something less than human.
All around him was gorgeous living colour that his waking self had not seen in eight years. Green and gold, blue and burnt sienna…
So beautiful.
He reached greedily for the bowl of sweets again, tingling with contended pleasure only for his eyes to open-
-And to find the dull, moist stone of his tomb (for that essentially was what the prison cell was) surrounding him. He was convinced the cell got smaller and smaller as every day past.
Eventually it would devour him as bitterness and resentment once had. Crush him slowly.
Deep down in a tiny recess of Draco's mind that he deigned not to visit all that often, he knew he deserved this misery.
He had, after all, turned himself in of his own free will due to this knowledge. But by then the damage had been well and truly done.
Draco had walked the path his father had always desired he would. There had been many times where briefly he had considered the possibility of rebelling. But when such thoughts occurred all he had to do was think of the boy whom he loathed above all else and they were quickly dismissed.
He'd taken the Dark Mark, thus branding himself irrevocably to the Dark Lord's service. The things he'd done, such terrible things that no sixteen year old should ever so much as imagine in their most darkest moments.
Draco recalled vividly the worst that he had afflicted...he could still remember very clearly how the crimson blood had trailed down the jagged shard of glass, staining it before it eventually dripped to the floor where a puddle of blood had already formed for the torture had been going for hours by then. Yet his victim would not relent despite his obvious pain.
All because of who his godson was and because Draco was far too cowardly to face Harry Potter himself. He had instead targeted the one person closest to his heart.
So he was rightfully banished to this life, a life devoid of colour, completely alone. True, his sentence was twenty years and he had so far served eight of those so by all accounts Draco should be alive by the end of it.
But he doubted it.
Draco squeezed his eyes shut and clenched his fists together tightly. He'd never felt so completely isolated. His parents were dead he knew that much and plenty of times he had been ever so close to simply ending it all so he could be with them again. So he could be in a place where there was so much lively colour and everything was just perfect as it was supposed to have been.
It was an allusion though; a fantasy from the desperate mind of one who has been kept in solitude and has never really had the chance to properly grieve for the death of his parents.
Nor had received the chance to offer an apology, however weak or redundant it might be, to those he had inflicted pain upon. He had possessed an ice cube in place of a heart all through his life until the day Draco realised that he had begun to hate himself deeply for what he was doing. That he saw it was terrible, evil and sick and despite what his father told him there was nothing to be gained from being an acolyte of Voldemort's. Nothing but a constant cycle of pain and hate and every act you committed was seen for what it truly was - just meaningless cruelty.
In the end Draco had walked right up to the enemy and offered to tell them everything he knew in change for some leniency. He was already a wanted man and never expected them to give him his freedom.
Some leniency this is.
It was then that he heard footsteps approaching steadily. One pair he recognised as belonging to the stringy haired guard who looked as disinterested in living as those under his charge. The others were also familiar but Draco would not place where he had heard them before.
Someone was here on a visit and judging from his familiarity with the visitor it was reasonable to assume he or she was here to see him.
Draco sat up tensely on his tiny excuse for a bed and pulled the blanket around him a little more. He was used to the constant cold that permeated the prison but he felt rather nervous and gave a small shudder.
The footsteps drew nearer and eventually they drew to a stop at his door, confirming Draco's suspicion that whoever was out there was here to see him.
Draco's last visitors, several years ago now, had been wizards and witches out to bribe magical favours from him, promising Draco his freedom in return if he would do as they asked. He had refused and in the end they had stopped coming altogether.
The door clicked open, he heard the key being slid back out of the lock and a series of metallic jangling as they were placed into someone's hand.
Odd, the guard has never trusted my visitors enough to hand them the keys.
He or she must be an Auror.
What information could he possibly offer them now? Voldemort and his father were dust and bones.
The wooden door swung fully open, creaking just a little and a tall, black haired man stepped in and even after all this time Draco had no trouble at all recognising him. The young man's appearance showed maturity and…weariness. But who could blame him for that? The fate of the entire world had once rested upon those shoulders and Draco had always thought they were rather skinny shoulders.
The man's luminous green eyes regarded him quietly. Eventually, since he did not seem about to explain the reason for his presence here Draco asked, "What do you want Potter?"
