Disclaimer: The lyrics are purely Hot Hot Heat, and the characters aren't mine either...But you knew that.

A/N: Yet another one-shot from yours truly. Eventually I will actually update my longer fics, but for now...Could you review this one? Anyways, this is a really awesome song...Go find it! I order you - and listen to it while you read.

another day, another night, another year,
another smile, another lie, another tear
this better not be all I've got
I never thought I'd end up here

Draco Malfoy sighed and swore lightly under his breath as he swirled the glass of wine held delicately in his hand. It was just another day in the rather pointless life he was finding himself leading. It was a pointless day flowing silently and stealthily into night before his eyes, when his drinking would be deemed acceptable. It was another year of serving and wondering and wishing and hoping, desperately, for a way out. It was another smile flashing through his mind, a now-frequent memory of a girl from his reasonably care-free years at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a smile that seemed to come back and haunt him every so often, especially on nights like these. It was another lie as he told himself that smile, that particular memory, meant nothing and that he would do best to put it out of his mind. It was another tear that silently rolled down his cheek, adding just a dash of salt as that single tear rolled off his pale chin and into the wine he was continuing to swirl.

jingle jangle that's the

sound of coins spent on
useless toys made for
useless boys

The Death Eaters were, in retrospect, fairly pointless. They spent time and effort, taking time away from families who they had probably loved at some point another, taking time away from the things that they did love, as shocking an idea as it was for a Death Eater to actually love something. They spent money on a Dark Lord who still wasn't in power, even after the fall of Dumbledore.

'Jingle jangle,' Draco thought absentmindedly as he tossed the coins in his pocket. The only coins left from the Malfoy family fortune, the only coins left that hadn't been invested in Voldemort's plan and the only coins that Lucius Malfoy had ever made and ever would make that would not be invested. Because Draco was going to jingle and jangle them for as long as he could, so their useless existence would be in his pocket, not invested in goal that they didn't seem to be any nearer to actually reaching.

Friday night I'll raise my
glass and say tomorrow
things will change I can't
afford to wait but by
Monday morning my alarm clock knows
how this story goes
and the endings the same as the start

Friday nights like this one, as cold and dark and dreary as the manor itself, these were nights of contemplation. These were nights of too much wine, and too much thought, really, since you can over think things. Each Friday night he thought and he remembered. Reminiscing was a privilege really, but something that couldn't really ever be taken away from him, thank Merlin. Hogwarts, as annoying as it had been when he'd been there, had been a safe haven. It had been a place where he didn't have to worry about his father or his inevitable future. And then, of course, that future had snuck up on him in a rather rude and abrupt way, and he was left thinking of the could have's, would have's, should have's.

He could have had her. He could have had Hermione Granger and he knew it; it engulfed him with a sense of depression. Really, he could have had any girl he'd wanted, but he would have had Hermione Granger, if he hadn't been Draco Malfoy maybe, or if they hadn't had that first encounter on that first day. And then in the years to come, of course, mocking taunts and made-to-hurt insults, cutting deep for both of them. That slap back in third year, which, when he looked back on now, was probably the defining moment for his should have's.

He should have done something. It was silly, really, his attraction and longing for a girl, then young woman, now full-grown woman, he would never have been able to have, never would, not in this life. He gave a small sigh and went back to his glass of wine.

Monday mornings were brilliant, since he could pick himself up from a weekend of that awful remembering thing and kill a few people, plot a few evil things, remind himself who he was supposed to be and what he was supposed to think. Bloody brilliant, those Monday mornings. Even more bloody remembering.

another day another night another year,
another smile, another lie, another tear
this better not be all I've got
I never thought I'd end up here

Well, he had known he would end up serving the Dark Lord. It had been obvious to him since around the age of eight, when the term "Death Eater" had really become familiar to him. All through his years at Hogwarts he had known and realized and found it just a little odd, to be spending his years growing up with some people who he was meant to hate and some who he was meant to have an alliance with. Oh the irony, that he would hate those who he was meant to embrace for their blood and love a girl so clearly muggle-born that it would have killed his father. Good that his father had never been a very perceptive man.

Hogwarts, in all its glory, and having to interact at all with a man he would someday have to do away with. That particular plan hadn't become known to him until the eve of his sixteenth birthday, and that particular plan had ruined him. Yes, he decided finally, he'd truly fallen apart in that sixth year, when school hadn't mattered and he'd actually had to look at the big picture. Face the facts. Learn, eventually, that killing wasn't so bad after all. But he couldn't help thinking back to a time when he'd just been a boy. When the big picture was just a turn of phrase and when he hadn't ever envisioned himself in his father's place. And now, he thought with one last twirl of his wine glass, here he was. With a sigh he let that one smile overwhelm him once more, let it seep into his brain to ease him into sleep. That one smile, haunting in a comforting way, would keep the monsters from the closet away and keep his dreams in a relatively good realm.

It always had – hopefully it always would.