Knowing he wasn't there, and never would be again, was unnerving. Although they were never close (in fact, they were far from it), Draco felt as if a hole has bored through his heart. He had seen the body as he stood in a crowd of his peers, every one of them covered in the grime and blood of battle. The blundering oaf of a half-giant had carried him, sniffling back great tears. Draco had been in the midst of shielding himself from a curse, but was too shocked to fend for himself when he saw the limp, pale body in the giant's arms, followed by scores of Death Eaters and the Dark Lord himself.
"Harry!" he had heard the ginger-haired female Weasley shriek over the din of combat. Both sides stopped immediately, knowing from the tone of her cry what to expect. As a whole, the crowd turned slowly to the crumbling bridge from whence the processional came. She went to rush forward, tears cutting through the mud of dust and sweat on her face, but was yanked firmly back by her father. Draco's mouth hung open.
It couldn't be possible, could it? He's The Boy Who Lived… Boys Who Live don't just die. It's a trick, obviously. A foolish, brash Gryffindor show of bravery meant to shock viewers into submission. That has to be it…
Draco felt a pressure in his chest; it was becoming harder to breathe and even harder for him to understand what exactly was taking place around him. Harry Potter was dead, Voldemort had won, and it was all over. A sinking feeling of guilt came before the pooling of tears in his lower lids. Could he have done something? Would he have done something?
All Draco's life, he had looked to others for a model in his life- first and foremost his father, the raven-haired Severus Snape, and then the Dark Lord. But amidst all his self-reflection and barren attempts as being the very image of his father, he had come to realize that more than the Dark Lord, more than Lucius Malfoy, Draco had compared himself to Harry Potter. All of the witches and wizards of their world knew of Harry's childhood- he grew up with horrible Muggles who kept his true identity and past from him; it was unsure if Harry would attend Hogwarts at all. But, in September of Draco's eleventh year, he had. And when Harry came to Hogwarts, Draco's entire plan for his school career changed.
He had boarded the train that morning with a sense of pride. He was a Malfoy, he would be in Slytherin, and he would make his father proud. Everyone in the wizarding world knew the Malfoy name; they were rich, powerful, influential, and very publicly sided with the Dark Lord. Draco knew from the moment he attended Hogwarts that he would be in the spotlight of not just his peers, but also of his father's fellow Death Eaters. He would attend school at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, he would make top marks, be Head Boy, and upon graduation join the ranks of the Death Eaters with his father, starting out in a top position of power in Voldemort's inner circle. It was perfect, flawless. Draco wanted everything about it; it was a fairytale.
Then came Harry. Oblivious to the magical world entirely, disheveled and ignorant, he destroyed Draco's mental timeline and aspirations. Here came a boy who not even a week prior knew nothing of the magical world, of Hogwarts where his parents "learned it all," and most importantly, nothing of Lord Voldemort. Here came this young, scrawny fledgling of a wizard with immense power that he didn't know he possessed. Here was a boy who Draco set himself against from the very beginning; Harry had refused his friendship, so Draco decided resolutely that they would be foes. Draco worked tirelessly to gain the respect of his instructors, but they all naturally favoured Harry Potter. He was The Boy Who Lived, the boy who excelled in school with ease, much to Draco's frustration. Harry was gifted and far more powerful than Draco.
The blond stared at the body in Hagrid's arms, trying to make sense of it all. For seven years, Draco had competed against and resented Harry for his fame and natural popularity; now, it was all over. Life for Draco could proceed as he had always imagined all those years ago on his first train ride to Hogwarts. Harry was no longer his foe. Harry was no longer his classmate. Harry was no longer in his equation at all.
His mouth stayed slightly agape, wand just barely grasped in his fingers. He heard someone whisper an exclamation of surprise behind him. A wail of despair rose from somewhere across the crowd. Out of Malfoy character, he sunk to his knees, staring at Harry, staring off into space, staring past the battle and everything around him to an endless white abyss of transience.
"No…" His wand fell from his bony fingers and clattered against the stone paving of the courtyard. "This can't be real." Slumping back on his heels, he choked. It wasn't fair; this wasn't how it was supposed to happen.
Good always triumphs over evil… that's what they've always said.
The silence of the assembly was crippling. Voldemort's shrill laugh sliced through the air and like a razor. Draco ignored it.
He was at the front of the crowd, very much visible by all the Death Eaters and the-his- Dark Lord, but his composure crumbled. Tears streaked his face in the way that had streaked the Weasley girl's, but he was silent. His lungs laboured to inflate and deflate through the now steadily flowing tears but still he watched. The only sound now in Draco's ears were the pounding of his own heart and the rasp of his ever-toiling breathing and all he could think of was that this was the boy, now a man, who he had tried to befriend, who he looked to for unspoken advice, who he modeled himself after. Here lay a man who had died having never been a boy to begin with, cast into the role of adulthood before he had ever spoken his first words or taken his first steps. And there, in Draco, died the boy who was sheltered and pampered his entire life, who believed that everything was set for his future, that it all would be handed to him on gleaming silver platters. There died the child that had never matured into a man, who had never experienced true grief and remorse until that very moment as he gaped at Harry's corpse. There died all of Draco's former life, of all his dreams of power and riches, and from the ashes rose like a phoenix the man Draco would become- guilty, determined, and uninhibitedly kind.
It took the death of Harry Potter for the wizarding world to believe that not everything has a happy ending. It took the death of Harry Potter to break the resistance against Lord Voldemort. Most importantly, it took the death of Harry Potter for Draco to realize that he had cared about Harry because he knew he needed people to care for him. He realized there, kneeling in the dirt and the blood of his friends and rivals that this was not a life he wanted; he no longer wanted to gain power at the expense of innocent lives.
It took the death of Harry James Potter, the Boy Who Lived, to mature Draco from a sniveling, selfish child to a man hardened by agony and fiercely dedicated to righting all his life's wrongs.