This fic was originally written for Potterstock on Livejournal, and is loosely based on 'Viva la Vida' by Coldplay. I've had it in my head for years, but it wasn't until now I finally got around to writing it down. As always, thanks to my wonderful beta Híril.

Chapter One

Swept Clean

-oOo-

Draco woke up suddenly, his heart hammering like it was trying to break out of his chest.

He had been dreaming about Hermione again. His dreams were always set in the past, as if he remembered even in his dreams he had no future.

Fragments of the dream still clung to him like wet robes in the rain, and he sat up to clear his head, throwing his threadbare blanket aside. The sun was shining in through the gaps in the wall, even though it couldn't be later than six o'clock. Draco didn't own a clock anymore, or much else for that matter.

He didn't need belongings to remember. Sometimes, the past seemed more real than the present.

The springs on the ancient mattress creaked as he rose, barely stopping to grab his broom on the way out. Niceties like changing out of the clothes he had slept in belonged in the past. Letting the door slam shut behind him, he stepped out into the alley winding its way to Knockturn Alley with his broom hoisted over his shoulder.

They must have thought his sentence was the perfect punishment – the whole Wizarding world would watch Draco sweep the streets, stripped of his wand.

After the initial pointing and laughing had abated, he didn't mind it much. His hands were busy and his head empty. There wasn't time to remember as he counted every flagstone in Knockturn Alley, sweeping them clean of dust and grime. He couldn't care less about the whispers in his wake ("Did you see?" "Not so high and mighty now, eh?").

Today, Draco was sweeping Diagon Alley. After a good night, he might count the shops he recognised from when he had been a boy, before his Hogwarts letter had arrived. Slugg & Jiggers, Ollivander's (best not think about the electrifying feeling of holding his wand for the first time), the Magical Menagerie, Eeylops Owl Emporium, Quality Quidditch Supplies...

He would never again feel the wind in his hair, riding an enchanted broom searing into the air. The only brooms he would ever hold would be like this one, entirely bereft of magic, only possessing the ability to leave his once soft hands calloused.

Draco counted the cobbles under his breath, not losing the count until he had swept all the way down to Gringotts. The streets were still empty, awaiting the morning rush. He sat down on the front steps, digging around his pockets until he found a few pieces of dried-up bread. He chewed and chewed on his breakfast as the world passed him by, occasionally sparing a glance at the man they had feared not so long ago.

Draco wasn't even thirty-five, but he felt like he had lived for centuries. Most of the people he had known were already dead. If he hadn't been too ashamed to face them again, he would have joined them long ago.

It had seemed such a perfect ending at the time – the Elder Wand spinning into Potter's hand as dawn broke over Hogwarts, defeating the Dark Lord like he had been born to conquer.

Unfortunately, life does not end in a perfect moment, and in victory Potter sowed the seeds to his premature end. Announcing to a hall full of his enemies that he was the Master of the Unbeatable Wand was perhaps, in retrospect, not the wisest move he could have made. Potter's amazing run of luck had kept him safe since he had emerged from the ruins of his home at the age of one, but it didn't last more than a month after the Battle of Hogwarts.

The Boy-Who-Lived had been killed by Trevor Yaxley in an ambush outside Hogsmeade, walking back to Hogwarts. They said Potter had his wand arm slung around the waist of Ginevra Weasley, and was hit in the back as he was stealing a kiss. The hex got the Weasley girl, too – collateral damage had never worried Yaxley unduly.

The survivors of the defeated side had to choose whether to meekly await their punishment, or throw in their lot with one of the Dark Lord's more dim-witted lieutenants.

For the Malfoys, it wasn't much of a choice. Draco and his father were awaiting their trials in Azkaban when Yaxley's forces broke them out, along with most of the other prisoners. The all-too-familiar bone-deep chill of the Dementors Yaxley had used to overcome the prison guards had barely dissipated when the two Malfoys joined a meeting of his forces.

As far as Draco could tell, they were somewhere on the Somerset countryside. Outside, bales of hay told him it was already summer – time had passed in skips and hops since May, and he had long since lost count of the days. The barn they were congregated in was full to bursting point. Draco recognised many of the faces – Travers, Rowle, Pansy Parkinson's parents, Avery – but many others were new to him.

He spotted Theo Nott in the crowd and would have shouted out to him, if the noise hadn't already been deafening.

Father steadily pushed to the front, despite the wall of warm bodies blocking their way ("Malfoys belong at the fore"), and Draco followed him as best as he was able. He heard snippets of conversations as he passed through the crowd:

"They say I 'aided and abetted' the regime – I just moved my shop to Diagon Alley to keep my customers. What was I supposed to do? I have to earn a living!"

"I heard I was next up for trial – they reckon I passed on information to You-Know-Who!"

"They won't catch me alive – I'm not going back to Azkaban!"

Suddenly, a bloodcurdling howl shocked everyone into silence.

They were almost at the old lorry that seemed to be intended as a stage, and Draco looked up. Fenrir Greyback stared right back at him, blood dripping from his mouth and hands. His hands – Draco couldn't be sure, but he feared the ugly, misshapen blob dripping of blood in Greyback's hands was a heart. A human heart, of course – Greyback wouldn't have bothered otherwise.

"Voldemort is dead!" he roared. "Yaxley –" he held up the heart and Draco felt bile rising in his throat – "is dead!"

There was a clamour from the crowd, most of who hadn't been able to see Greyback's trophy before. Greyback ignored the agitated voices and continued his call to arms.

"I'm alive, and I'm going to stay alive! I'm not waiting for the Ministry to hunt me down – I'm standing up to them!"

The ragged-looking wizard next to Draco cheered.

"They're coming for the rest of you, too – if they haven't already. How many of you are fresh out of Azkaban?" There was a bigger cheer this time. "They can pick us off one by one, or we can fight together. I say we fight! Who's with me?"

The room erupted in cheers and shouts, and Draco turned to look at his father.

Lucius Malfoy looked gaunt; there was a frailty about him Draco never had noticed before the Battle of Hogwarts. He refused to engage in the chanting and hollering around them, but nodded slightly to Draco.

They were in.

Draco wasn't surprised; despite being set free from his cell, he wasn't under any illusions they were free to go. He wondered how every single decision he had made had been the wrong one, forgetting there rarely had been a choice to make once the Dark Mark took possession of his left arm.

Shacklebolt had made a few disastrous choices too, being more concerned with the forthcoming trials than the possibility of an uprising. He resigned three days after the Azkaban breakout. In a decision that would cost them dearly, the Wizengamot appointed Arthur Weasley in his place.

Weasley, unused to power and still reeling from his family's losses, listened to his advisors and took a hardline approach. All he achieved was to drive anyone who feared being marked as a supporter of Voldemort into the arms of the army gathering behind Greyback.

Just like the Malfoys, they had nothing left to lose.

During the previous war, Draco had occasionally forgotten everything was going to pieces around him. He had walked down Diagon Alley during the holidays, and apart from the unsightly beggars it had been the same. Hogwarts had been different, but it had still been a school of magic, with houses and students and professors. Even the Ministry had trundled on, attending to cauldron thickness and sending out the Pest Advisory Board to deal with Bundimun infestations amongst the efforts to get rid of anyone with Muggle blood.

This time, no saving graces survived the initial year.

Diagon Alley laid in ruins, and Hogwarts had been turned into a besieged stronghold. Malfoy Manor had been sacked several times, and Draco had dared return only briefly to get some of their hidden gold. The furniture, the paintings of his ancestors and the heirlooms adorning the many rooms were either stolen or beyond repair.

Even when the Malfoys had been in disfavour and the Dark Lord had sat at the head of their table, Draco had held on to a scrap of hope. He really had believed things would go back to normal, back to a time when Quidditch and beating Granger in the next exam had been his main concerns. As he duelled with his back to the wall in Hogsmeade after being spotted on a raid for provisions, Draco finally realised this time there was no going back.

Hitting a Weasley in the calf with a curse that made him yelp and stumble backwards, Draco spotted his chance to get out of there.

As he Apparated, he realised that he wasn't thinking 'Home', like he usually did. Home wasn't the ransacked Manor anymore, nor Hogwarts, and he would be damned if he ever referred to the hovel his family had been assigned as home by Greyback.

Draco Malfoy had no home, and it soon looked as if he didn't have a future either.

His mother didn't make it through the first winter. Draco hadn't yet learnt how Muggle elecktricity worked, and the abandoned holiday cottage they took shelter in was bitterly cold. No Healers had joined Greyback's campaign, so once Draco's healing spells had been exhausted there was nothing they could do to fight the pneumonia.

Afterwards, his father became even quieter. Whole conversations seemed to pass him by, never mind the finer details of a planned raid. Draco bartered his mother's wand to have Lucius taken off active duty. At least it kept him alive, but Draco was increasingly beginning to wonder if there was anybody in there.

Around them, everything was going to hell.

The Order was suffering heavy losses, too, but Draco didn't care about them. As the new war entered its fifth year, he had to count backwards to figure out he would be turning twenty-three that year.

Six years ago, he had celebrated his coming of age with Theo, sharing a smuggled bottle of Firewhiskey in their dormitory. They had raised their conjured glasses to the future and their place in it. It went without saying they would achieve great things; weren't they the vanguard of the Dark Lord, building a great new country?

Instead, the future mostly consisted of ducking and running, scavenging to secure enough food not to go hungry. Occasionally Draco took down an enemy, but there always seemed to be more of them.

Theo had disappeared the previous year. If he was lucky, he was already dead.

Draco couldn't picture what would happen in the next six years. He looked around the camp – his fellow fighters would have made his seventeen-year-old self cringe.

By the fire, a young witch was tearing into a skinned rabbit with bared teeth, smacking and licking like a werewolf ravaging its prey. In another life, Draco might have admired her across a ballroom, debating whether to ask her to dance. Next to her, a Centaur who had ended up on the wrong side of his herd tried to mend his knapsack. There were blood traitors here, even Muggle-borns – as long as they had a wand, no one asked any questions.

They had long since ceased pretending the war made any sense.

Fenrir Greyback clung on to power – the fate of anyone daring to oppose him put most challengers off. Draco didn't expect to survive much longer, but he wouldn't be surprised if Greyback emerged as the victor from the smoking ashes of the Wizarding world.

To be continued next week