Disclaimer: I don't own HP or any of the copyrighted stuff.

A/N: I was washing dishes one night (yeah, washing dishes; I get brainstorms at weird times) when this story popped, fully formed, into my head. Then, of course, I just had to write it out, or else it would plague me until my dying day. Again, major DH spoilers. Just in case you missed it in the summary. ;)

Heart of the Dragon

Draco Malfoy stood stock still, wreathed in a cloud of dust and shattered fragments of stone and marble. Hogwarts Castle was crumbling on the inside; everything from the staircases to the suits of armor to the walls were being used as a defense against the oncoming Death Eaters, and all those things were falling as rubble at his feet. He was not standing on either side of the battle, but right in the middle, unable to decide where he should be.

Looking back, Draco didn't know how he had ever come to this point, been faced with this decision. He was a Malfoy, a pureblood, the one that the Dark Lord had chosen to work for him. So how could he be standing here now, with these thoughts running through his mind?

Since Draco had first met Saint Potter on the Hogwarts Express, they had hated each other. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that Draco had hated Harry, and Harry had mistrusted and disliked Draco. Yet, tonight, Draco had tried to kill Harry, but Harry had saved Draco's life. Maybe that was what had triggered the thoughts now causing Draco's head to reel. He certainly couldn't think of any other possibility just then...

A figure rose in the dust and Draco jumped back, dodging a curse and flattening himself to the wall. He had no idea who this person was, and even if he had known, he probably wouldn't have known what to do. He wasn't even sure what side he was on at the moment.

This certainly hadn't begun in his first years at Hogwarts. Those years had been pretty normal for Draco, aside from Slytherin losing the House Cup. First year, the most eventful thing that had happened to him was learning about that oaf, Hagrid, keeping a dragon in his house. Draco had gotten detention in the Forbidden Forest for his trouble. Harry Potter had almost been killed in protecting a Philosopher's Stone from being stolen, but it wasn't as if that had particularly bothered Draco.

Then, in Draco's second year, the Chamber of Secrets had been opened. He had actually found that year rather exciting, watching Mudbloods (and the Squib's cat) being Petrified and trying to figure out who the Heir of Slytherin was. When he found out, he had wondered why his father hadn't told him; Lucius Malfoy must have known, after all.

Third year was the year that Sirius Black had escaped from Azkaban, and there were dementors swarming all over Hogwarts. Draco hadn't liked them himself, but he had been quite amused by the effect they had on Harry Potter, which had nearly enabled Slytherin House to win the Quidditch Cup. Nearly, but not quite. Then, at the end of the year, they had caught Black -- but he had escaped from Professor Flitwick's office somehow. At the very least, he didn't seem very keen on Hogwarts after that.

Then came the fourth year, the year of the Triwizard Tournament, and the year that the Dark Lord returned. No one knew it but Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, and the Dark Lord's Death Eaters. Lucius Malfoy was a Death Eater, however, and so Draco was one of those few who knew the truth.

No, it was definitely not anything in those first few years that had caused this train of thought. So had it been in the fifth year, when Draco's father had been working with the Dark Lord in secret, when they were trying to thwart the Order of the Phoenix, that it had begun? No, Draco didn't think so. That year had been perfectly normal, up until the very end.. when Lucius Malfoy had been captured with other Death Eaters in the Department of Mysteries, after Sirius Black was murdered, when the world finally saw that the Dark Lord had returned...

A towering figure loomed out of the darkness, raised its wand, and the air cleared. Draco could clearly see Professor Minerva McGonagall now, and as the dust cleared, so could the Death Eater across the hall. The professor and the masked wizard began to duel, ignoring Draco and probably not even realizing that he was there.

So that brought him to his sixth year at Hogwarts, last year, when he had become a Death Eater and been given a mission by the Dark Lord. It had been hard, nearly impossible. Draco had thought more than once that he was going to fail, that the Dark Lord would murder him for being incompetent. His mother had said it was to punish his father for being caught and for allowing the turn in circumstances that had brought about the discovery by the rest of the wizarding world that Lord Voldemort had returned.

Draco had formulated a plan based on something he had heard from a fellow Slytherin. It had been exceptionally difficult, and if he hadn't been so afraid of what would happen if he had failed, he would have given up. Even the ghost who lived in the girls' bathrooms, Myrtle, had suggested that Draco kill himself and not give the Dark Lord the pleasure. The girl was very morbid, though, and Draco couldn't do that; it would kill his parents, even more than if the Dark Lord had done it himself.

At last, near the end of his sixth year, Draco had managed it: he had repaired the broken vanishing cabinet in the Room of Requirement. Then he had called the Death Eaters, and it was he who had let them into Hogwarts for the first time in history. They had made it to the Astronomy tower to wait, and there Draco had ambushed Albus Dumbledore as the old man returned to Hogwarts.

That had been his mission: Help the Death Eaters into Hogwarts, and kill Albus Dumbledore. Yet for some reason, after Disarming the headmaster, Draco simply stood and talked to him for a long time. Too long, in fact; the Carrows and Fenrir Greyback had joined him, tried to take the glory for themselves. However, it was neither they nor Draco who had finished Albus Dumbledore.

It was Severus Snape. Snape had come in from below, and Dumbledore had pleaded, "Severus... please..." Yet the last thing he had seen in life was Snape's face contorting with fury, with hatred, as he cast the Killing Curse. Dumbledore had fallen from the tower, lifeless and broken, but Draco had not been able to fully complete his mission.

McGonagall knocked out the Death Eater with a well-placed Stunner, but no sooner had she done so than another curse whizzed over her shoulder and she whipped around with the dexterity of a much younger woman and raised her wand again...

Then had come the last year -- this year. It must have been this year, Draco thought; there was no other explanation. This year, when he had been forced to watch people die, to torture, and been tortured himself. It had been almost as hard on his parents as if he really had been killed the year before; in fact, he often wondered if that might have been easier.

It certainly would have been easier on Draco himself, that was certain. Sure, he was appointed Head Boy, but he knew he didn't deserve it. It was only him because he had the purest bloodline of even the Slytherins, because his father was a Death Eater, because Professor Snape had become headmaster. Draco often wondered why Snape still favored him, after all that he had said to him the year before. It wasn't as if the Malfoys were in particular favor with the Dark Lord these days.

Draco had tried to fix that, though. Only an hour or so before, he and his two old cronies, Vincent Crabbe and Gregory Goyle, had decided that they would try to capture Potter for the Dark Lord. While the rest of Slytherin House was evacuating the castle, too afraid to show their true colors in the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco, Crabbe and Goyle had hung back.

The rest of that particular memory came back to Draco in flashes: Disillusionment Charms... the Room of Hidden Things... confronting Potter... Granger Stunning Goyle... Fiendfyre... being pulled onto a broomstick... Potter flying back for something that had been lost in the Room... finding safety in the corridor outside... and, as the Room sealed itself, knowing -- knowing that Vincent Crabbe was dead...

That knowledge again cut through Draco like a knife as he stood there against the wall, watching Professor McGonagall duel yet another Death Eater. Crabbe had been full of himself and unwilling to listen even to Draco this past year, but that didn't mean Draco didn't feel something when Crabbe died, nonetheless. Suddenly anger coursed through Draco, and his fists clenched. Why had the idiot summoned the Fiendfyre if he didn't know how to control it!?

Now different images passed through Draco's mind, seemingly in no apparent order: his first time in Ollivander's, buying his wand... Potter Disarming him at the manor and taking it... the face of the former Muggle Studies professor as she dangled over the table at the Death Eaters' meeting... the look in her eyes when the Dark Lord had cast the Killing Curse... Pansy, standing up in the Great Hall to suggest that Potter be given to the Dark Lord immediately... and then, inexplicibly, the faces of his parents, Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, swam before Draco's eyes.

What would their choice be, Draco wondered? Or should he even listen to their opinions? They had wanted him to bring Potter to the Dark Lord, to kill blood traitors and Mudbloods. And yet, tonight, he had been saved by Potter, a blood traitor, and a Mudblood -- not once, but twice -- while one pureblood had been unconscious on the floor and another had killed himself because he didn't know how to control a spell. A mistake, they would say... but just maybe that wasn't the biggest, real mistake...

Suddenly resolve stiffened Draco's frame and his pale eyes flashed. This had all been a mistake, every bit of it. How could a pureblood who was stupid enough to use a spell he couldn't control or stop be a better wizard than a Muggleborn who had yet to find a spell she couldn't master? It wasn't right... it couldn't be...

And suddenly Draco noticed that there was a wand lying on the floor. There was blood on it, but no one nearby; he took it as a sign and picked it up. He turned, and the wand lingered for a split second on McGonagall. Then it turned on the masked Death Eater, and before he even knew what he was doing, Draco cried, "Expelliarmus!"

The Death Eater hadn't even noticed that Draco was there, and so he had no indicatino of what was about to happen. His eyes were on McGonagall, and it was only when his wand flew out of his hand that he traced its path and found Draco, who caught it.

"What are you doing, boy!?" the man cried; but it was too late.

"Stupefy!"

Jets of red light shot from the two wands in Draco's hand and the one in McGonagall's. The Death Eater was knocked backward into the wall; he collapsed and lay still.

Now McGonagall whirled on Draco, her wand drawn. "What was you doing here, Malfoy?" he asked cautiously.

Draco drew a deep breath and lowered the two wands he now held. "I -- I'm not going to attack you, Professor, I swear. I -- I don't --"

McGonagall looked at him severely, her lips pursed. "Why are you not with the Death Eaters?"

For a moment, Draco closed his eyes, as if stiffening his resolve one more time. Then he opened them and suddenly blurted out, "Because I want to be here, fighting for the other side."

McGonagall blinked several times in quick succession, as if she couldn't believe what she had just heard. Then there was an explosion behind her, and a pair of masked Death Eaters came inside the hole that had just been blasted in the wall. Curses were already flying in every direction as Luna Lovegood and Neville Longbottom hurried down the corridor to face them.

"All right, Mr. Malfoy," McGonagall said at last, now smiling at him. "Make Hogwarts proud."