Title: Circular
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, Les Miserables, or Andrea Gibson's work.
Pairings: None, actually. If you like Drarry, there's room to interpret this as Draco/Harry, but if you don't, then you can view their relationship as completely platonic.
Rating: T, pushing the limits of M, though. Not due to sex or anything, but I talk about depressing stuff here. But then again, most of the darker stuff in here was based on canon, so I'm just going to assume that anyone who read the books, regardless of age, can handle this. I mean, god, y'all saw Dumbledore die, right? That's pretty traumatic to me, yet JKR didn't prevent little kids from reading it.
Warnings: Mentions of Dumbledore's death, serious tone, lack of my usual gratuitous sex.
Summary: As a result of the war and its aftermath, Draco faltered, fell, and flew again.
Word Count: 2,601
Author's Note: This is my entry for Round Two of the Quidditch League Fanfiction Competition.
I am exhausted. After traveling around and then starting summer school, my body and brain are just so over everything, yet I didn't want to let my team down or ask for an extension, so here you go. I put my heart into this, and I hope it pleases you :)
This story is more of a single-character story, focusing on Draco's development as a person over time, so there are time skips and not much of an actual plotline per se, because I don't believe that every story needs to have a plot, you know? Sometimes it's just someone learning things, and we get to learn things with them.
Yes, there is Harry in here at some point, but that guy gets too much face-time as it is, so he's really very secondary in this particular story. If any of you are interested, I could always sequel this and turn this into more of a full-bodied Drarry with much more Harry and much more interaction between the two of them, but for now this is all I have the energy to write, and god knows I have two WIPs to work on and a floating one-shot idea that won't leave me alone, so if I ever do sequel this, it'll be a while.
Anyway, if you are reading this, I'd like to say thank you, and I hope my life stabalises soon.
Here are the prompts I used for this story:
"And so it must be
For so it is written
On the doorway to paradise
That those who falter and those who fall
Must pay the price!"
- Stars, Les Misérables
"Fear is only a verb if you let it be."
-I Do, Andrea Gibson
Also, the themes of weakness and freedom.
Draco will never forget the day Dumbledore died.
For the longest time, Draco had planned the act, constantly holding the two halves of his soul apart from each other, connected by a thin thread. One half did not want to do this at all—he wanted to just go back to the happy days where he got everything he wanted and took everything for granted. The other half, however, knew that what he wanted was no longer relevant. The world had been reduced to one complexly simple ultimatum—kill Dumbledore or pay the consequences.
Like Atlas holding the heavens away from the Earth, Draco separated his weaker, more nostalgic self from the determined, more burdened self. The past was gone, the present was demanding, and the future was only conditional on this one task. Kill Dumbledore, kill Dumbledore, kill Dumbledore—
Yet his weakness was always there, wasn't it? When Draco should have put his whole heart into the task, he kept faltering, kept making the most ridiculous mistakes that any fool, even Longbottom, could have avoided with just an extra five seconds of thinking.
Why didn't he give himself those five seconds? Why did Katie Bell and the Weasel have to pay for his weakness?
Yet doggedly, he kept on trying, despite being tormented at night by the stretching of his soul, dealing with the vague feeling that it would all end one day and he was doomed to live the rest of his life with only half a soul, if he even had a "rest of his life" at all…
Then the moment came when the feeling wasn't vague anymore, when all he could breathe in was the feeling, and he watched helplessly as piercing blue eyes flickered at him from behind half-moon glasses.
"Draco," he had said. "Years ago, I knew a boy, who made all the wrong choices. Please, let me help you."
His stronger self screamed, even as his weaker self trembled and wanted to reach out to him.
"I don't need your help! I have to do this! I have to kill you... or he's gonna kill me!"
Even as he kept struggling and faltering, he heard the presence of others running into the room, coaxing and screaming and pressuring him to just do it, just complete the task.
Yet his weaker self was gaining manipulative strength, fighting his hand, and despite all the chaos outside of him, the chaos within him began to win.
He lowered his hand, the two halves of him merging together again…
Then Severus came in and finished the job.
The last thing he saw was Dumbledore's newly lifeless face before Draco was whisked away.
"We find the defendant not guilty. He is free to go."
Draco stared unbelievingly at the Wizengamot member in the middle, the one who had just said those fantastic words.
Free? He was…free?
He turned to look at his mother, who had tears leaking out of her eyes, even as the rest of her face remained impassive. He had not been very surprised that she had been allowed to go free, since it was hard to prove that she actually did anything among the Death Eaters, but Draco had let the other Death Eaters into the castle! He had attempted the murder of Dumbledore! He had…he had…
The train of thought petered out as he turned and looked at Potter, whose face was drawn with lines. It was because of Potter. For some reason, Potter had thought it was necessary to stand up for Draco and prove his "innocence," if it could even be called that. With Potter's testimony arguing for his freedom, Draco was pretty much untouchable. The war had just ended, after all. Everyone was tired, and everyone was willing to give up their own exhausting and contradictory beliefs in favour of pleasing Potter, who was their Saviour, their heroic figure, their excuse for everything.
Hell, even Draco felt like doing that. Why argue with Potter anymore? Why make a scene? He might as well just give everything up to Potter for now. He needed some rest for his tender soul, the halves of which had finally merged fully into one weak entity, trembling and wavering unsteadily in his body like a new-born deer.
As he walked out of the courtroom, still in a daze, he chanced one last glance back at Potter, who was looking back at him, his eyes shadowed.
Freedom did not taste sweet or feel triumphant. Freedom was simply the weak ache of newly unshackled wrists.
Draco groaned as he woke up in an abandoned alley, bruised and bleeding.
The sad part was that waking up like this was a common occurrence. It seemed that both sides of the war, both "Light" and "Dark," wanted to give him a piece of their mind.
In a detached, academic way, Draco could see that it made sense. After all, to the Light side, he represented an evil traitor who had had the nerve to share the same food and drink with their children at Hogwarts, the one who let the even bigger evils into the castle to torture and murder them all. To the Dark side, he represented the pathetic traitor who couldn't do his job right and yet managed to get off relatively scot-free, even as many of them ended up in Azkaban.
When you have all those people upset at you for so many different reasons, of course you're going to end up getting hurt a lot. It's inevitable.
Inevitability did not warm Draco's heart to the idea of making the alley his bed, however. Honestly, they could all just piss off. Yes, he was sorry, and yes, he wished he hadn't done all the things he did, but that did not mean he deserved to be their punching bag every time one of them felt the least bit cranky.
Life was hard, Draco concluded as he painstakingly lifted himself up and gingerly tested the strength of his ankles. It expected you to toil and toil towards one specific path. If you attempt to walk two paths at once, you end up splitting your legs with a body unused to such advanced gymnastics and falling to the ground with a twisted cry.
He really wished he never tried to split himself. He had been a fool.
This was the price he had to pay, he realised as he rubbed his swollen cheek. This was the price for being half-arsed.
He vowed that from now on, he would put his whole heart into whatever he did, because if he was going to suffer anyway, then he might as well do it with martyr-like intensity.
It started with a cauldron, the ingredients for a Calming Draught, and a book.
Add to those items the elements of time, motivation, and persistence, and you had a Draco who gradually made a name for himself as a Potions Master.
It wasn't easy. He had to always keep his guard up, because the moment a Glamour wavered, he got attacked again, and every attack set him back in terms of wasted time and effort healing himself. Also, people were not exactly eager to read his research or ingest any of his potions, so he had had to work hard and meticulously to create quality potions that would make up for his name, and he also slowly built relationships with people through apologies, displays of competence, and patience. After all, every Potions Master needed customers and funding, especially if one was branded with a mark of evil.
Even when he forced himself to be open and vulnerable in order to reach out to more people, however, there were still many people who still didn't buy it, choosing to spit on him rather than listen to anything he had to say.
Whenever this happened, he would shrug, collect their spit in a vial, and give them a meaningful look that would make them scramble to try and change his mind about hurting them, because who knows what a Potions Master could do with their spit, right?
Oh, Potions Master. Earning that title was a million times better than earning his freedom, because this time, it was he who had earned it, not Potter's charity.
Potter approached him on the anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts.
They were in a pub, with Draco downing a pint of beer, as he always did for this occasion. Normally, he wouldn't touch beer even if he were in a desert and it was the only source of water, but it felt appropriate to drink something that gave the same sort of aftertaste that the occasion gave, even after all these years.
Draco's eyes flicked up as Potter made his approach, and he patiently wanted for him to speak first. After all, Draco was forty years old now, and he knew better than to start a fight and unravel all the progress and development of the past twenty-odd years.
"Malfoy," Potter rasped, and he swayed, shooting out his arm to grasp the seat next to Draco.
"Potter," he responded, inclining his head. Enough time had passed that people did not fawn openly over Potter anymore, especially since the prat had not really done anything noteworthy after the war except to start a family and to be an Auror; thus it was okay for Draco to say his name out loud like that, and hopefully it would be okay for him to allow Potter to sit down, too.
Potter did not seem to care about what was okay and what wasn't. He sat down.
"Malfoy," he rasped again, this time with the syllables slightly slurred.
"Yes, Potter?"
"Y-You're a."
"A…?"
"Potions Leader or something. Right?"
Draco smiled, amused despite himself at Potter's pathetic attempt at drunken conversation. "Close enough. Did you want something?"
"I wanna know. How."
Draco sighed, the smile slipping away. Drunk Potter was even slower than sober Potter, which he had not thought possible. In fact, it was probably slower than sober Weasel, which was saying something. Maybe even slower than drunk Weasel. Draco pondered this puzzle.
Potter's hand slammed down on Draco's arm, right above where the Mark was, and he felt the burn of Potter's skin through his sleeve.
He hissed. "What the hell do you want, Potty?"
"I saved you."
"Uh huh…do you expect a thank you? A signed card? What the hell do you want from me?"
"No, no, I mean, I saved you, and then you did better than me. Even though. Scary world. I…I want to know. How you can be so unafraid, so successful. I need it."
Draco sighed again and shoved Potter's hand away from his arm.
"Is that what this is about? Are you jealous of my success? Do you think I don't deserve it, as Death Eater scum? Well then, tough, because you saved me, and that's what you get for doing that. Besides, I don't see how my success or failure affects you in any way."
"No," Potter whined, and Draco had to wonder just how much he did drink. Potter slumped down onto the table, still whining. "No. I am the hero. I am the one…who should have done something great, but I was, I was busy being modest. And now it's too late. Ginny is disgusted with me, and my kids don't understand why I'm famous, and…am I a has-been, Malfoy? Is this it? This where it ends?"
Draco slowly counted to ten. He was never coming to this pub again. Sure, he had had a lot of experience coaxing people into feeling beneficial things in order to be more amenable to giving Draco their money, but this was different. Potter was never going to give Draco anything, except his life, of course, which he was unlikely to do again. He had nothing to gain from helping Potter out. Nothing at all.
Yet maybe that one partial pint of beer Draco had consumed was enough to make him reach out and pat Potter on the back.
"There, there, Potty…there is no such thing as too late. There is always time. What is stopping you now?"
For a long time, Potter did not answer, keeping his face pressed against the table without even the cushion of his own arms. Draco wondered if Potter's nose would hurt in the morning. Just as he was about to voice that silly question, however, Potter finally answered.
"I'm afraid, Malfoy. Afraid that I'm going to finally get out there for a good cause and then ending up mucking it up and turning people off that cause forever, just because I'm Harry Potter. I'm afraid that I'm too old and rusty to mean anything to anybody anymore, and I'm also afraid that even if I succeed, I'll just become power-mad like Dumbledore…"
Draco winced at the name, as it still had the power to cow him, but he kept his comforting hand on Potter's back. "So basically you're saying that fear has paralysed you, made you stagnant for the rest of your life."
"Yeah!"
Draco shook him and forced him to at least turn his face towards Draco, his unwilling conversational partner.
"It's normal to feel fear, Potter, and it's even normal to feel self-conscious about your image, especially if you're Harry bloody Potter, but you're a Gryffindor. Doesn't that mean anything to you anymore? How will you know the answers to any of your fears if you let them actively stop you from looking for the answers?"
"I—I…"
"For the love of Circe! I have very little patience today, and just being with you makes it worse, but all I'm saying is that whatever the hell it is you want to do, go out and do it. It's your life. Now kindly get out of mine."
Without waiting for an answer, Draco stood up and left the pub, leaving behind the pathetic phantom of a Potter.
One week later, the headlines proclaimed that Potter had resigned from the Ministry and decided to devote his time to tracking down the survivors of war from the Dark side and rewriting history to include their voices, for they are human, too. Potter told the interviewer that he hoped to understand the psychology behind and circumstances around those who had followed the Dark Lord and work to ensure that those conditions would never be met again.
Draco stared at the paper for a long time, sipping his tea in silence.
Maybe it would work. Maybe it would crash and burn and cause Potter to crawl back to his old boss.
But it was good to know that the former hero, at least, was trying to be a hero again. The world felt safer with a hero, Draco quipped half-heartedly, fluttering his eyelashes at the paper.
The wards chimed. Draco set his tea and paper down, made his way to the door, and opened it.
There stood Potter, looking much steadier on his feet than he had back in the pub.
"I'm starting with you," he stated matter-of-factly, as if Draco needed no further explanation. And maybe he didn't. "May I come in?"
Draco nodded and stepped aside, giving him room to walk in.
When they had seated themselves on his sofa, Draco began his story, looking at Potter's eyes, which were now bright and undimmed by the shadows he had seen that day, back in the courtroom. Having a purpose really did suit him.
"Well, Potter, my life has been nothing but changes. I will never forget the day Dumbledore died…"