Challenges: Philaria's 85 Shades of AU Competition on HPFC; Screaming Faeries' Greek Mythology Mega Prompt Challenge on HPFC; DobbyRocksSocks' Harry Potter Chapter Compeition on HPFC.

Characters: Draco Malfoy, Hermione Granger, Lucius Malfoy.

Prompts: 7. Superhero, 8. Villain. 14. Cronus: write about a disappointed parent; Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone, chapter 10: Halloween: write about someone pretending to be something they're not.

Word count: 4,132

A/N: Entire lines of speech written in "Italics, not unlike this," signify Lucius Malfoy using his power as he speaks. He always does; he doesn't quite have control of his own power in this fic. More generally, I need to stop writing change of heart fics, particularly for Draco Malfoy. It's getting old, fast.

The thing about the solar system towards the end of the story? I don't know where that came from. I needed a way for Hermione to seem like a know-it-all, but also as though she was more than just her power. So that happened. I apologise if it confuses anyone, just drop me a line if you'd like me to explain it further.

All the hurt, all the lies
All the tears that they cry
When the moment is just right
You see fire in their eyes

Superheroes - the Script

"What did I tell you about praising the boy?"

The shouts echoed down the street, letting everyone know exactly what Lucius Malfoy was angry about this time. It boomed through the rows of near-identical 'picturesque' houses, reverberating off of locked doors. His voice could drive a saint to feel guilt, fuelled by the power behind it. It was the primary reason Malfoy, Inc., was so successful – at least in the mind of his only son, Draco, who was sixteen, depressed, and still not sure what the company he was to inherit actually did.

Not certain why his A in chemistry wasn't good enough, the dejected Malfoy heir drifted further away from his life-long prison. It was a hard earned grade, after all; Hogwarts was a prestigious academy for 'people like him'.

He doubted any of them were really like him, once you got past the crux of the matter: superpowers. His was flight, such a useless ability that he should've been dumped immediately into Hufflepuff, like Ernie MacMillan and his 'gift' for talking underwater. That was where the people with 'sidekick-level' powers were meant to go.

Everyone knew that wasn't how it worked. Mister Scott Hatt, the man who assessed every ability, was the grandson of the man who'd abandoned the ancient system. Supposedly, it caused poor self-esteem.

As if being trapped among bad people because you would most likely be bad, too, didn't distress anyone.

Hufflepuff was for those who would follow their friends, no matter where they led. Ravenclaw was no longer home to those with intelligence based abilities best suited for tactics and off-field work; now it was for those who would always save themselves first. Instead of confrontational physical-type powers, Gryffindor took anyone who was essentially good. And Slytherin, which had been for those with self-serving abilities, often involving manipulation of others?

Slytherin was for the would-be villains of the future.

It didn't matter that Draco didn't want to control other people. Hatt certainly didn't listen to the then eleven-year-olds protests: he wasn't like his father and didn't want to be. He didn't care what they wanted; it was his job to ensure there were never any 'bad eggs' in the bunch. If you put a villain with the heroes, you'd ruin a generation worth of saviours. But, stick a hero with the villains, you corrupt a single person: this was acceptable. In the scheme of things, it was a small loss.

Besides, he couldn't take any chances that Malfoys' boy had inherited the families' legendary poisonous tongue.

All of this flowed through Draco's mind as he inched over the fence around the school, not laying a finger on the metal. He was on his usual rooftop before his thoughts drifted to more depressing concepts, like his fate. One year until graduation. Then an internship to Hell.

He wondered if he'd been Hitler in his past life. They'd studied the mass-murderer in World History; frankly, it wouldn't surprise him. The way he saw it, actually, it'd be just his luck.

Draco had a mind of his own. He'd discovered early in his life that flying fast enough would wash away Lucius' venomous influence, as long as the direction was away. Eventually, the influence had simply stopped having a hold over him. It was as though his mind was wildfire, his fathers words ordinary water: if the fire burned bright enough and long enough, the water wouldn't extinguish it. That was his explanation for why he now had free choice.

Or a version of it, at least, a version that allowed him to critique his lot in life, his so-called 'friends' and their schemes. Crabbe's plots were dull, always kitchen raids and consuming enough to power the human blob within. Pansy Parkinson, with her ability to melt into shadows like a snake in the grass, used her power to collect gossip and start rumours engineered to shatter reputations. Only Zabini fought the stereotype – and that was because he'd got stuck when he saw the soul of Luna Lovegood, someone completely good and pure, an artist whose pictures came to life – a girl wrongfully cast in with the self-serving Ravenclaws.

His train of thought had Draco wondering if Zabini could see his own soul, tinged with obsession or some more innocent variant of it, so-called love. He'd never known himself to look at someone the way Blaise looked at Luna, or so he was trying to convince himself. After all, he couldn't afford to be –

"Bit distracted, Malfoy?"

If he hadn't been able to fly he would have fallen off the roof, he was that startled by the intrusion. Eying the now-open window accusingly, he narrowed his eyes. "What do you want, Granger?"

Hermione Granger, who shrugged off his snappish tone dismissively, was all bushy brown hair and skin pale from lack of sunlight, as she spent every spare moment indoors with a book. She was one of those rare super-individuals who had normal people for parents, and was one of the few dozen who elected to use the school as a home away from home, staying there year-round. She had an eidetic memory and perfect recall of absolutely everything she'd ever seen, heard or read. If the system was still based on power, she'd be in Ravenclaw, just like Lovegood. Since the system had broken and everything was now based on morals, she fell into Gryffindor, with all the heroes.

If Draco could see his own eyes whenever she wandered into his line of sight, he would have known he was as lost as Zabini, infatuated with someone so completely good. He'd know the constant bullying was due to frustration and repressed desire, or some misguided attempt to protect her from him and his curse. He was a Malfoy after all, doomed to villainy since conception.

"I'm helping the housekeeper," she offered as an explanation, her chocolate gaze dipping to the designer sneakers on his feet mistrustfully. "Clean the windows, I mean."

"And waited until I –" He cut himself off mid-sentence, realising his mistake. She wasn't dreading him shoving her from the roof, for she had to know he wouldn't bother – the few times they'd been alone, he'd been silent, not knowing what to say when he wasn't obliged to insult her due to the expectations of everyone else. No, she had to clean the outside pane of the window, of course she did. And what had Zabini commented on, way back when they were all starting at Hogwarts? It had been the start of the first football match, Gryffindor versus Ravenclaw, modified to allow them to use their powers. She'd hesitated when her red-haired friend had headed for the tallest level of the bleachers, and Blaise had said her soul had turned dark. 'That's fear,' he'd said, 'she must be afraid of heights.'

Hermione Granger was definitely afraid of heights, and Hogwarts was seven storeys high – discounting the towers at each corner of the castle. Every level had windows, all of which must have needed cleaning.

And, unlike Draco, when she fell, she'd hit the ground.

Begrudgingly, eh touched back down on the grey-blue tile of the roof, extending his hand to the soon-to-be heroine. One more year, he chanted mentally, then paused: it wasn't a good thing. One more year, and he'd either have nothing, or lose himself to his fathers' wishes.

"What are you doing?"

"It's a hand, Granger. You've watched me play, seen me fly in gym. It's obvious that you hate heights, and I'm not about to let you fall." When she stared at him, an unusual look of confusion in her eyes, he couldn't help but feel offended, darting for an excuse. Does she really think I'm so terrible? Hermione Granger should know better, since she was meant to know everything. "Everyone knows I come up here. If you fall, it'll look like I did it, wouldn't it?"

"McGonagall would never assume that."

Mentally, he dared her to provide evidence. "She's a shapeshifter, not a mind reader."

"Then Dumbledore –"

"Are you going to let me help you or not?"

She blinked, thrown off by his impatient tone. Impatience means hurry, she recited, it means purpose and distraction. It means Mister Malfoys' shouts were directed at him. Her hand was paper white and looked tiny in his tanned palm, but the sight was somehow mesmerising. She shook her head, wishing she'd thought to tie her mess of hair back. "You are aware that I have to clean every window, aren't you?"

"Are you more or less likely to complain if I make sure you don't plummet to your death while you do that?"

A pleasant shade of rouge coloured her cheeks; he tried and failed to suppress his pride. He, the infamous bully Draco Malfoy, had done that, had made her feel something other than fear and rage. "Fine," she muttered, but she didn't complain again.

She tried not to think anything of it as the young man who was supposed to be her sworn enemy twined his arms around her from behind. Speaking in terms of practicality, after all, he'd be able to prevent her from falling if he held her properly, as he was. Like a lover, part of her mind quipped, the part that recalled the classic love stories: Pride and Prejudice and Romeo and Juliet and, her favourite, the twisted love between Sybil and Dorian in the Picture of Dorian Gray. She managed, with some effort, to pull her mind from the dark caresses of Dracula – because, quite frankly, that entire tale disturbed her almost as much as the obsessive infatuation depicted in Wuthering Heights. An hour passed, then two, and then he had set her down on what used to be the school astronomy tower, before the class was cancelled due to lack of attendance. The two were sitting side by side at that point, arms pressed against each other, consumed by discussion.

"It's the most prestigious school in England: best teachers, caters to our unique talents. I'm not costing myself simply because I'm cowardly about one thing."

"You've said that, but it's still not my point. I'm trying to ask why you're cleaning the windows. Housekeeper's power –"

"She's telekinetic, it allows for cleaning with ease. I know that. But it's the principle of the matter."

"What principle says you should face your fears to clean?"

"I need to be able to tell people I've faced it at least once, don't I?"

"No! That makes absolutely no sense. Are you aware of that?"

"What do you want me to say, Draco? That I'm some sort of masochistic mad person who should be locked up?"

"That'd be a good start. So yes."

"Alright, fine. I'm a masochistic person who is a danger to myself, and therefore, should be locked up. Now what about you?"

"What about me?"

"When are you going to admit that you're nothing like your father?"

"What?"

Hermione smiled knowingly, as though she could recite every secret he'd ever tried to keep. Some part of his mind, the part that was prone to madness, expected her to call him on the stray one-eyed cat he'd stopped to feed on the way to school every morning since he was eight years old. "'You'll never amount to anything'. Sound familiar?"

"How did you mimic that voice? You can't have ever met my father. He doesn't associate with –" people like you. The words hung in the air, unspoken, but the meaning was implied.

"Is that really the point here?" Seeing his expression, she sighed. "I can hear your fathers' screaming from my dorm when the window is open at night. He's rather loud; in all honesty, I'm surprised he's not a Weasley. Molly can screech like a – still not my point. I also know you hide the bruises beneath your clothes. Why else wear long sleeves in summer?"

"Poor self-confidence," Draco gave as an explanation, but it was half-hearted. It was obvious that he was listening keenly to the girl, no, young woman, he'd bullied for as long as he'd known her name. All the while, his fathers abuse had echoed in his mind, resonating in his skin: a kick to the ribs here, a slapped wrist there, a screamed insult not long after. He bit his lip absently, staring at the horizon over the forest on the edge of town, where the setting sun bled flame across the sky.

"I'm not gullible enough to believe that."

"Why are you trying to help me?" he snapped, though he hadn't intended to sound quite so rue. "All I've ever done is abuse you."

She was silent for a long while; by the time she spoke, the day was close to done. Twilight fell like mist over everything, giving the castle-turned-school a violet hue. It was a memorable scene, a spellbinding illusion. If magic existed, magic like real witchcraft, this was what Draco thought it would look like: simultaneously beautiful and deceptively final, like an elegant woman. Like Hermione Granger, he decided, except sharper, more easily made cruel.

When at last he spoke, he could count three stars hanging in the sky over their heads. "Your eyes."

"Excuse me. What? My eyes?"

"They're liquid silver, for one, which is my favourite colour, and has been since I was little. There's a one-eyed cat not far from here, actually, a stray; I stop and feed it sometimes, when I leave the school grounds for a walk or quick trip to town." So that's how the cat started getting fat, he thought, somehow pleased by the discovery. "I only gave it time because its' fur is silver.

"Your eyes are almost that same colour, except shinier, more like starlight, more reflective. I could always look into your eyes and see my own gaze peering back at me. I couldn't see you, though, and that's why I kept approaching you. It didn't matter back then how many times you shoved me away, insulted me; it didn't even give me pause when you knocked me down the Entrance Hall staircase in third grade."

He remembered that incident more clearly than any other instance, for two reasons. First was the entire semester spent in detention after that, only avoiding expulsion because his father was on the school board. The second was that it hadn't even been an intentional attack, for once, it was honestly entirely accidental. Pansy Parkinson had been latched onto his heels like a sheep to a shepherd or a duckling to its' mother, prattling on about her inane gossip, rumours and lies he genuinely could not care less about. In his attempt to escape her, he'd bumped into many people that day, acting on some stupid superstition that the leech would stick to someone else if he touched the right person. It was sheer misfortune that sent Hermione Granger and her tottering stack of books cascading down the steps.

"If you look into Crabbe's eyes, Draco, you see darkness. Shadows and vicious intent, all painfully obvious – that boy is as subtle as a nuclear holocaust. Look into the literally dark gaze of Blaise Zabini, perhaps ironically, you see lightness: hope and optimism and contentedness, mostly. Love, too, for Luna. Looking into your eyes, though, I didn't see either of those things, not clearly. It wasn't that there was nothing there. It was more like you had dropped a veil over whatever was there, suppressing it."

"I thought you had a photographic memory," he muttered, trying to ignore the flush spreading across his cheeks. "Not the ability to see souls."

She nudged his arm, chuckling softly. "You can't hide your soul, Draco, at least according to most of what I've read. That said, no, I can't see them. I was deciphering intent in the gaze and subtle body language cues, all of which can be read about in books written by normal and, well, people like us. I wasn't certain, of course, it's largely guesswork, but I started reading about non-verbal communication in our second year here. I didn't work up the nerve to ask Blaise until after the staircase incident.

"Of course he was elusive and refused, at least at first, to give me a straight answer. But I happen to be talented at reading between the lines. I called him on the Luna affair early on, and he dropped the act quickly enough. 'Muddy', he told me, 'but light'. That's how he described your soul. 'He has the potential to be the best sort of person, if he's nudged in the right direction.' I must have looked like I was going to try and shove you into changing at the time, but we were thirteen and, oh, he's a controlling individual. He made me swear to wait. 'He's also got the potential to be the worst sort of person. Push him the wrong way at the wrong time, and he'll fall into darkness so fast, the descent will kill him.'"

Draco was silent for several minutes after that. At first, he was trying to imagine Hermione taking orders from anyone, let alone Zabini. Then he was picking through the meaning of her words. Best, or worst. Nudge, shove, wrong, right. "I'm one of your hero projects," he finally spat. He couldn't recall having ever felt quite this dejected, even when Hatt ignored his pleas and threw him in the deep end.

"Oh, absolutely, at the start. Everyone knows the heroes go to Gryffindor, no matter what the brochures say, and the villains to Slytherin. For a Gryffindor to create a good Slytherin, to convert them so thoroughly that they remain basically 'good', despite being surrounded by the living embodiment of 'bad'. I decided during the first welcome feast that I was going to be a hero by doing that, by 'converting' one of them. I picked you out of everyone by the end of our first day of classes. That was easy: you were the one who looked lonely, even though the rest of the Slytherins seemed to orbit around you. I suppose being the Sun would be rather isolated, though. The nearest planet, after all, is fifty-seven million, nine hundred and ten kilometres away. Even at that distance, though, the Sun still impacts on it. It's burned away most of Mercury's atmosphere, which is why it's unliveable."

"Thanks." Funnily enough, being compared to a ginormous, destructive, all-consuming body didn't make him feel any better about being her pet project.

"If you'd stop interrupting me, maybe you'd hear something you want to hear. I'm saying you're like the Sun, not are it. The students, at least the ones in our year, operate around you, not anyone else. The Slytherins are Mercury; you consume them, make them change. Blaise is a nice guy, if you can get past his arrogance. Even Crabbe, blob that he is, isn't so bad. He doesn't pick on people as much as the other years do. Adrian Pucey, for example, in the year above us; he corners people in the washroom and pins them down while Astoria Greengrass and her boyfriend, I don't know his name, they torture the victim with hallucinations. You make them restrain themselves."

"Oh, yeah? What about Pansy?"

"She's an anomalous body," Hermione said very quickly. "A comet or asteroid. They break away and orbit around other bodies, usually. Anyway, Ravenclaws are Venus; the Sun, you, burn them up, bringing out the worst in them. Venus is unliveable, the atmosphere non-existent, the planet itself toxic; Ravenclaws aren't as capable as you seem to be, so they burn themselves up in the process of trying to beat you. Hufflepuffs' are Mars, the red planet, the one with the potential to support lifeforms like us. They have so much potential, really, but they're secondary to Earth."

"Gryffindor. If you say that I give you goody-two-shoes her-types life –"

"I was going to say purpose, actually. A hero isn't worth anything if there aren't any illains. But after that chat with Blaise –"

"In which you blackmailed him, more than chatted."

"I admitted no such thing, remember, so that may as well have never happened. But after chatting with – oh, fine, blackmailing Blaise, I eventually realised I didn't think of you as the Sun because you were al-consuming or central or even in control of everything, everyone, else. I realised I looked at you and I never dreaded out encounter – I looked forward to them, the same way I look forward to daylight. Because I'd decided that one day you were going to look at me and it wouldn't be blank. I suppose I associate you with the Sun, because you are a symbol of hope."

He was staring at her, his expression blank – for once, though, it wasn't a mask; no, Draco Malfoy, son of the fork-tongued criminal mastermind, was at a loss for words. Hermione Granger had rendered him speechless for the first time in his life.

"But we graduate in a year, Draco, and I'm sick of waiting for Blaise to tell me I can talk some sense into you. I shouldn't need his say-so to be able to convince you to do the thing you have to do!"

"Have to?"

"You're miserable," she said, standing up and casting her silhouette against the starlit sky and all its' shades of blue. "You've been assigned I can't imagine you want or have ever thought you might want. If you don't do something soon, you're never going to be happy. You have the right to be happy, though, Draco, even if you have decided that you don't, for whatever reason. You don't have to be alone, and you don't have to be miserable."

She left then, her words ringing in his ears like the toll of a churchs' bells. Hermione Granger would always know what to say to convince people to take her side; it was part of being able to recall ever single aspect of what it was to be human. He was distracted from his ability to consider her speech by the cutting cold.

He hadn't realised how much he was depending on her for warmth.

"Where have you been?"

"Oh, don't waste your time."

Even Narcissa, who had been under her husbands' spell for longer than Draco had been alive, paused in her actions in reaction to their sons' outburst. The entire house fell silent for one heartbeat, two, three –

"Excuse me?"

"You heard me," Draco snapped, fighting the urge to stare at his hands, pale and small on the handle of the expensive suitcase he'd found and filled, to cave to his fathers' desire. Hermiones' words beat against his skull: I picked you as a symbol of hope. "You heard me; don't waste your time. Your trick won't work on me; it hasn't for a long time. But you knew that, didn't you? That's why mother isn't allowed to praise me, because you can't afford a change in the Malfoy legacy. One hero is all it'll take to change things, after all."

"You can't leave the house. Where would you go? No one wants you. No one ever has."

"You can't touch my money," Draco spoke slowly, as if to a child. He was trying to suppress the childlike quiver in his tone, strained by the intensity of his internal fight against the power he'd been up against all his life. "I can afford to stay on school grounds. I can even afford a deposit on my own place when I'm done there." He didn't know if that was true. It probably was; his allowance had always been abnormally high. If it wasn't, his Aunt Andromeda might take him in out of pity. "I never have to see you again."

"You'll have to. You'll need something eventually: money, my connections, a threat to be taken seriously."

"No," the prodigal son stated, his tone suddenly firm. Symbol of hope. "I might be stuck with your name for now, even trapped with the knowledge that you're my father. But I don't have to be the next you."

His grip was tight on the handle, the leather lining pressing into his flesh, leaving patterns that would remain into the night. The door was as loud as one of Lucius' infamous screams when it slammed, the glass rattling in the pain.

Draco Malfoy felt as though he was free of a terrible burden for the first time in his life. All of Lucius' expectations had been cast off like a winter coat when spring began.

There are worse things to be, Draco decided as he pictured her knowing smile, full of secrets and whispers you'd always want to know but could never pry out of her, than Hermione Granger's symbol of hope.