Notes: Still Fighting is the long awaited sequel to the completed Still Alive. Both stories are OotP-compliant only and do not necessarily contain canon from any successive books. The author does not claim rights to any characters, places or plot created by J.K Rowling. Thank you to all my readers for being so patient in the years following Still Alive. The sequel will likely be a shorter piece than its predecessor, but will hopefully tie up all the loose ends and lead up to a dramatic conclusion!

Still Fighting

1. Do I Know You?

Draco Lucius Amadeus Malfoy was a ghost, and he was haunting Harry Potter. He had become more or less accustomed to this over the last eight or so months that he'd been dead, as strange and, well, other-worldly as it had originally seemed. What was harder to get used to was the tug. It was not quite pain, but whatever the ghostly equivalent of pain was. Draco knew that most ghosts haunted the place where they had died, or some other location important to them, which seemed rather restricting. He had wondered once why miserable ghosts like Moaning Myrtle didn't just get out more. He knew now, of course. It was the tug that tied a ghost to its unfinished business. And Draco was tied to Harry. Better than having to haunt Ynys Addoed, he thought, as Hermione Apparated Harry's pale, still body to the hospital.

He felt the tug instantly, but he could resist it for a while. As much as he wanted to make sure that his friend was taken care of, he knew Harry would rather he stay and make sure everyone got off the island. He glared at some nearby trainees until they started moving people into the boats.

"The worst hurt are being Apparated in," Blaise Zabini said from beside him. "There are some medi-wizards around but they can't help everyone. Some of them'll probably die."

"I know," Draco said. "Maybe it's better for some of them."

Blaise looked up at him, momentarily taking his eyes off his large charge, the former guard Hamza, who was helping with the supplies under the suspicious gazes of thirty MLE trainees. "What's it like?" he asked. "Being dead, I mean."

"Boring," Draco told him shortly.

"Except on days like today?"

"Exactly."

"Was that really Potter?" Blaise blurted out, as though this had been the first question he had wanted to ask.

"Yes," Draco said. "Hang on a sec."

He floated over to where a trainee was helping the three Hogwarts students who had stupidly decided to follow Granger to the island. The redheaded one, Weasley junior, was carrying a coloured bag over one shoulder. The thin mousy one looked pale and slightly green as he stared at the boats bucking and tossing in the waves. The girl was still carrying the tiny newborn swaddled in bloodstained cloths. The trainee, the one Weasley had called Beau, looked tireder than all of them.

"What'll you do with the baby?" Draco asked, standing with his ghostly feet on the sloping rock edge.

The Gryffindor girl piped up when no answer was forthcoming from the other man. "He's coming to the hospital with us."

"Look after him," Draco told her.

"I will."

"Buzz off, will you?" the young trainee muttered, clearly distracted, and Draco didn't think it wise to argue with him. He watched the boat leave, then floated back inside the castle to make sure no one would be left behind on the prison island. The trainees had taken lots of prisoners and left lots of bodies.

Draco floated through the halls, feeling as though he really was haunting the place. He had died here, not too long ago, at the hands of Bellatrix Lestrange. But from what the Gryffindor students had babbled, he knew that she was dead now. Harry had promised to avenge him, and he had done it. He had also said he would do it before the baby was born, but that wasn't his fault, not really. Draco hadn't really even expected him to do it.

"Could you?" he remembered asking as he sat beside Harry in Harry's cell. "Kill your own child like that?"

"Not my child," Harry had argued. "It's a toy – a weapon. If what you heard is true –"

"Voldemort seemed pretty sure."

"Then I won't even see it until its old enough to hold a wand, and then it'll be too late. For everyone. I have to destroy it."

"If you say so."

Harry had been too late, but maybe it was all for the better. In their hands perhaps the baby couldn't be used for evil... perhaps. Still, if they had stuck with the plan everything would have been a lot simpler.

Satisfied at last that there was no one around, Draco floated outside again. The boats were all in the water, bobbing and bucking on the stormlike-waves that never seemed to calm around the island. It made the place seem very drab and uninteresting, now that there was no one in it. Draco remembered a time when it had seemed the most terrifying place in the world. Now he was dead, of course, there was no need to worry. Finally, when all the boats were almost out of sight in the after-rain mist, he closed his eyes and let the tug take him away.

Someone passed through his before he had a chance to get his bearings. An orderly, carrying a bundle of sheets over both arms, walked though what felt like an icy cold shower. She shrieked in surprise, dropping her burden and jumping to one side. "Oh, dash and blast it!" she squeaked when she had regained her breath. She drew her wand and spoke into it. "Hello, it's Maddie on the fourth floor – we're going to need an exorcist up here right away."

"Hey!" Draco exclaimed indignantly.

"Yes, I understand," the girl simpered with rather practiced-sounding sympathy. "I realise you don't want to leave so soon, but you're dead, you see. And normally that would be all right, but this is a hospital, and it does tend to disturb people a little more than it would usually. Besides, if we didn't exorcise regularly we wouldn't be able to move for spirits."

"I'm not a patient," Draco snapped. "I'm here to see Harr – er, Mark Jenson. That is – oh never mind."

He followed the tug up the corridor, leaving the girl rather stunned in his wake. He had been separated from Harry for about an hour – which was usually long enough for his flesh-and-blood friend to get himself into trouble. He moved a little faster – then, when he heard yet another upstart orderly calling for the exorcist, he went invisible.

So it was that he walked into the waiting room outside the ward without anyone noticing him. "He woke up?" Hermione was saying, looking frazzled. Her hair appeared to be standing on end.

"Just for a moment," replied another girl. Draco vaguely recognised her – she was quite petite, with red hair cropped just under her ears. Weasley's sister, he guessed. "Then he passed out again."

"Did he say anything?" That was Dumbledore, looking the same as ever. Draco glanced around at the other people in the room – apart from Granger and the two Weasleys there was Draco's cousin Nymphadora Tonks, the werewolf Lupin, a tall dark man Draco didn't recognise and what appeared to be Neville Longbottom. The last was wearing a lime green orderly's robe.

"Yes," the red haired girl said, her voice lilting a little. "He asked me who I was."

"There," Weasley announced triumphantly. "Now try and tell me that's Harry in there. No way he wouldn't recognise Ginny."

"He was stabbed, Ron," Hermione reminded him. "He's confused – wouldn't you be?"

"I can't credit this," Snape snarled. Weasley appeared extremely surprised that the Potions Professor had come down on his side. "We've been through this once already with Flint. Potter is dead. This man..."

"He's another imposter!" Ron shouted. Tonks put a hand on his shoulder.

"Voldemort would not try the same trick twice," Dumbledore insisted. "Besides, if what you say about the ghost of Draco Malfoy is true, then there is at least one person who has been convinced for at least several months if not years."

"Malfoy didn't even know Harry!" Ron hissed, brushing Tonks' hand aside. "He hated him! Besides, Malfoy definitely is dead. Who says he's a reliable witness – he could be having us on!"

"Draco Malfoy was on our side when he died and I can only surmise that he is still," Snape argued. "But ghosts can be fooled and so can half-dead prisoners."

"He's sick," Longbottom interjected. "Can't we wait to figure out who he is until he's better?"

"First sensible thing anyone's said so far," Draco murmured, not bothering to hide his annoyance.

The argument ceased instantly. "Draco," Snape said after a moment's silence. "Is that you?"

"No, it's the ghost of Merlin's dessert butler, of course it's me," Draco snapped, coming back into visibility well out of the eyeline of the door. He shot Longbottom an icy glare. "Call for an exorcist and I'll freeze your kidneys off," he announced.

"Charming," Longbottom grunted.

"What do you know?" Lupin suddenly asked. Draco looked at him. He looked older and tireder than ever, but there was a dangerous glint in his amber eyes. "Who is this man? What is happening?"

"Remus," Dumbledore said in a warning tone. He turned to look at Draco. "Mr. Malfoy."

"Professor," Draco replied, feeling oddly as though he were a lot younger and about to be given detention.

"My, ah, sympathies," Dumbledore said.

Draco looked down at himself. "No need," he said eventually. "I don't really miss it, you know."

"I wonder why," Ron grunted. "You look a fright."

"Thank you," Draco snapped back.

"How long?" Snape asked.

Draco shrugged. "Two years."

Snape put a hand up to his face and pressed two long fingers to his temple. "I am sorry."

"You must have suffered terribly," said Granger, putting her end in.

"It was months ago, I'm over it," Draco said, shaking his blood-striped hair out of his eyes and crossing his legs in mid-air. Since it appeared this was going to take a while, he might as well be comfortable. "Harry got through four years."

"If that's Harry, why doesn't it look anything like him?" Ron immediately demanded. "The face is wrong, the hair is wrong – his eyes aren't even the right colour!"

"I know," Draco said, resting his chin on one hand. "But I can't help there, I'm afraid. I only met him after, and I didn't realise just how different he looked until we got out.

"After?" Hermione prompted.

Draco looked at her. "After he died."

They all stared at him. "Rubbish," Ron snarled eventually.

"Hey, you were there, not me," Draco pointed out. "He doesn't really remember being set on fire but it definitely happened. Lestrange moaned about it enough. Not to him, though," he added. "He doesn't really know. I haven't told him."

"Why not?" Lupin asked suspiciously.

"Didn't think it was my place, I suppose. Anyway, Lestrange says – used to say – that he was burned to death, but he came back to life. Voldemort tried to kill him a few times, apparently, but he always came back."

Hermione's eyes were wide. "Does Harry know about that?"

"Sort of. I had to tell him something when we found out about the baby."

The redhead girl squeaked, clearly uninformed of certain events. "Baby?"

"Lestrange had a baby while we were on the island," Ron explained. "She seemed to think it was Harry's."

"It is," Hermione said, before Draco could. "If you'd looked at him, Ron – he has Harry's eyes. You would know too."

"You should have brought the child here with him," Snape put in. "Not to mention the three students who somehow managed to find themselves in the thick of things."

"Oh, those three," Hermione sighed. "They must have followed me – the cheek of them! That Quin, he's the ringleader."

"I want a word with William as well, when they get here," Lupin said, to Draco's surprise. "The idiocy of it all."

"Children," Dumbledore said with a tone of exasperation that was rather unlike him. "If you would please allow Mr. Malfoy to continue?"

"Thank you, Professor."

"In fact, I think it best if you began again – from the beginning this time, if you please."

Draco sighed, giving his best expression of ghostly martyrhood. "Oh, very well."

They all sat down, some more reluctantly than others, at Dumbledore's hand motion.

"I got sent to Ynys Addoed in October '99. I was working for Professor Snape, as you probably know, letting him know things that filtered down to me from my father's people. I was rather low down on the Death Eater hierarchy, so I couldn't really help much. Anyway, this one day I was in the manor while my father was having a meeting of 'business associates'. I wasn't attending, but I watched them leave. They were all wearing masks, but I recognised a couple of them. Then I felt this hand on my shoulder, and this voice said to me: 'tell Snape there's an imposter at Hogwarts."

Draco saw Hermione stiffen up, and a couple of the others looked surprised as well. Clearly Snape had never let on who had given him warning of Flint's dangerous game. "Who was it?" Snape asked.

"I didn't know at first," Draco replied, casting his mind back to the incident. "I panicked at first, I thought for sure I'd been found out and it was someone playing games with me. But when he moved away I saw his hand. It was Pettigrew."

Lupin's hand went white as he gripped the arm of his chair.

"I wrote a note to Professor Snape in code," Draco went on. "My father caught me though, just after I'd sent it. He's really mad, you know," he sighed. "Stark raving. I barely had time to think before he'd called his henchmen in on me and I was being hauled up in front of the Dark Lord. I thought he was going to kill me, but... I don't know, maybe Pettigrew stood up for me, or something. He might have thought I would hand him over if I thought it would save my life. Trust a coward to think like a coward. Anyway, I ended up in Ynys Addoed. Lestrange tortured me for a few hours, then they threw me in this cell."

"Next to Harry," Hermione interrupted.

"Well, yes. I didn't really believe it was him, at first, but after a while I figured he didn't have a reason to lie. And after a year... well. He was too much of an arrogant prig to not be him."

Ron flushed. Draco ignored him.

"Eventually I figured Harry would probably be my only chance of escape, and my time was running out. They give you sentences in Ynys Addoed, and at the end of them you don't get set free – well, except in a spiritual sense, I suppose. I only had two years. So I helped where I could – I taught him Legilimency."

Dumbledore and Snape exchanged glances. Eventually Snape snorted. "Well, at least somebody could."

"Anyway, we started plotting our escape. Before anything could happen though, Harry started being dragged out of the cells more and more – this was about February last year. I asked him what was going on but he wouldn't tell me. Then about six months later he told me Lestrange was going to have his kid."

Ginny put her hands over her face.

"I didn't ask him much – I guess he didn't want to talk about it. But Lestrange liked to talk. Between us we worked out that Voldemort had ordered the creation of this baby, to use as a weapon, we think."

"He said Voldemort had a weapon that had been made with his blood," Hermione said softly. "But how could such an innocent thing be a weapon?"

"Voldemort tried to kill Harry," Draco repeated. "And he failed, over and over. He wouldn't have anyone else do it either – it's apparently very important that he does it himself. We think that Voldemort was going to raise Harry's son to help him – in one way or another. We were going to try and do something about it, but then..." he winced. "In October..."

"Your time was up," Tonks suggested.

"I suppose you could put it like that. Next thing I know... here I am. Dead, painless, but still around. It wasn't all bad – it meant I could wander all around the castle and see what they were up to, invisible. I haunted my father for a while. He tended to stick around the manor a lot more after that." He allowed a spectral grin to cross his face. "That's when we put our escape plan into action. I distracted the guards and Harry snuck out of the cells. He was just strong enough to climb the stairs to my father's room. I knew there was a vial of Restorative Potion in the drawer so I –"

"You gave it to him?" Snape exclaimed. "Do you realise how dangerous –"

"Of course I did, Professor, I might be dead but I am not an imbecile," Draco replied hotly. "But Harry would have collapsed there and then otherwise – it was all he could do to get that far. He jumped out of the window and let the current take him to shore. I had to help a bit – if I try I can manipulate my morphic field to affect things like wind and water."

"But the Restorative Potion ran out when he reached Hogwarts," Hermione said.

"Maybe not," Longbottom said darkly. It was only the second thing he had said, and Draco looked at him surprised.

"Of course it did," he argued.

"He was stabbed in the stomach," Longbottom said. "But what he's going through now is much more reminiscent of extreme withdrawal symptoms of a Restorative. Are you sure he couldn't have taken more of it?"

Draco stared at his former classmate as things suddenly became clear. "Oh, bloody hell," he whispered.

"He did seem to recover astoundingly quickly," Dumbledore mused.

"I thought he was just lucky," Draco said, remembering the way Harry had collapsed outside the pub and been sick as a dog the next day despite having not drunk anything, but had perked up immediately after a quick trip to the bathroom. The way his scar had only been visible intermittently. "Oh - idiot - he must have kept the vial. I told him to just take a sip, but..." he floated down in his sitting position to the floor. "He's addicted now, isn't he?"

"Almost certainly yes," Snape muttered. "He's been living on borrowed time – he'll have to wait for all his old injuries to heal on their own time and more."

"Why?" Hermione asked. "Why didn't he just recover properly at Hogwarts?"

"He wanted to be ready," Draco said, looking up at her. "We promised each other that when we got out, the first thing we'd do would be to stop the child being born. He knew we didn't have much time – not enough time for him to heal properly."

"You failed," Ron interjected. Draco turned on him.

"Thank you, again, Weasley, for pointing that out! Harry was supposed to kill Lestrange today but he was too damn late! That baby is a bloody danger to him, you, and your whole precious society, so whatever you do, don't let anyone get their hands on that child!"