DISCLAIMER: I don't own Harry Potter.

Draco Malfoy stared out over the pitch.

It was almost midnight, and he'd been out here alone with his broom for hours. Now that Snape had the run of the school, the curfew was rarely if ever enforced on any Slytherin Death Eater's child that really wanted to be up and out at night.

Draco looked out over the pitch, and he felt wildly lost.

He was having an identity crisis at age seventeen.

Who am I? Who have I always been? Who am I going to be? Is it really up to me?

That was all he thought about, all he had ever thought about since the very moment Dumbledore's words, almost his dying words, had crept into Draco's ears and stayed planted right in his heart.

He could change.

This horrifying, dreadfully dark future of killing and torture and fear and the Dark Lord did not have to be his future.

But of course, he knew that it was not really his choice. Dumbledore thought he could protect Draco and his family, but really, Draco knew that he couldn't, even had he lived. No one could protect anybody from the Dark Lord. Dumbledore had not even been able to protect his prodigy, his golden child, Potter; look what had happened to him - vanished into the blue.

But there was not a day, not an hour that passed by that Draco didn't wonder what would have happened had he said yes to Dumbledore. For one thing, that intense guilt that his actions had caused someone to die would not be a constant part of him. He could hardly remember anymore what it was like to live without that guilt.

He tilted his head back a little, tried to pick out the constellation in the stars that he had been named after. This used to give him great comfort, up until a year or two ago; something about seeing that permanent image in the sky and knowing he bore its name made him feel a certain sort of peace.

Now it didn't matter. The stars had been there before he was born and they would be there after he died; what did they have to do with him? They twinkled above him and they didn't care whether he lived or died.

Did anyone care whether he lived or died?

There was Mother, or at least there was her thin, white-faced shadow. She was not the mother of his youth, the woman with a beautiful, unlined face and a voice that was always laughing and hands that were always loving. He no longer had the father of his youth either - the man that loved him and believed in him and was proud of him. The war had taken his parents from him and replaced them with cold, living shells.

Underneath all that, did they still care? They barely even spoke to him anymore, even in their own home - especially in their own home. Instead of the comfort of returning to the Manor and knowing that, whatever was going on at school, his family would be there for him, he felt the horror of returning to a very different family indeed.

He thought of Aunt Bella, and he shuddered. He could hear her cold, derisive voice jeering at him in his dreams, remember her hissing in his ear, probing into his mind, alternately praising him and belittling him. He thought of Snape, and dismissed it immediately; he found out as time went on that he understood the man less and less.

In fact, everything that he had ever cared about was either gone completely or twisted into something unrecognizable, something dark and frightening. Was it the war that had done that? Was it the Dark Lord?

Draco looked out over the pitch, and he saw it an instant before he dived.

A figure in a white dress was hurtling towards the ground; he knew at once that it was a person, and his instinct kicked in immediately. He swooped underneath the falling person and caught them; the impact caused his broom to drop almost to the ground, but he steadied himself before rolling off.

The figure in his arms was limp.

Draco shook it, looking a little closer. It was a girl, and she looked very familiar, though he couldn't quite place her; her face was as white as that of a ghost. Draco slapped her face gently, and she opened her eyes.

She stared at him for a moment, and he at her. He knew now where he had seen her: she was a Gryffindor student, one of the annoyingly cheerful ones. He had just saved the life of a Gryffindor girl.

Alternately, he had once been responsible for the death of a Gryffindor.

Was this irony?

"Am I dead?" asked the girl after a moment.

"No," said Draco. "You're very much alive. How on earth did you fall?"

"I jumped," she said faintly. "From a tower."

"You were trying to kill yourself?"

The girl closed her eyes.

"Why did you catch me?"

"You...were falling."

"You should have let me fall all the way."

Draco let go of her, and she tumbled to the ground with a thump. "Fine," he said. "Next time you jump, I won't catch you. Sorry I saved your life."

"Malfoy?" she said, recoiling. He remembered her name now: it was Brown, Lavender Brown.

"Yes, it's me," he said, getting up and reaching for his broom. "Why don't you go to your common room before you get caught?"

"I can't…" the girl's eyes darted, wide with an odd kind of terror.

"Then find another way to off yourself," said Draco irritably. He was irritated, because her emotion struck a nerve with him. There was a time when, if he had been brave enough, he would have done the exact same thing she had just tried to do; but he never was able to, in whatever way he tried, and every failed attempt left him feeling the same cold fright, the fright that he could have succeeded and he would have been dead if he had, the same fright he now saw in the girl's eyes.

He had never tried to jump from a tower of the castle, though. That was inventive.

The girl shrank away from him, drawing into herself. Her white nightgown was muddy where he had let her fall, and she was beginning to shiver. She was looking at him as if he were some sort of monster.

"How do you live with yourself?" she said, but, he noted, with no real venom in her voice. "Knowing what you've done?"

Draco took a step back from her, feeling rather as if someone had struck him. How indeed? Had she not struck at the very heart of the problem he faced every day? How he had become the person he had, a person able to do the things he did, to eventually almost commit murder?

Of course, he had never realized how wrong murder was until he tried it, and his very soul recoiled from it. Had he not always been told that killing was a part of war?

But who had started the war? Had it really needed to be started? He felt so lost now, like he understood nothing, especially all the things that used to make perfect sense to him.

He glanced back at the girl, who was still looking at him guardedly, clearly afraid he was going to call a teacher. She would most assuredly be tortured for this, he realized, if she was caught, if he snitched on her.

He had saved her life already, an act that no one asked him to commit. Was that enough to make a trade, to rid him of his guilt for being responsible for the death of someone else?

Or did it require one more act of retribution?

The girl got to her feet slowly, watching him as if he were a dog about to strike, and then stood still, unsure of where to go or what to do. She looked oddly luminous, the white of her nightgown standing out in the dark, despite the muddy patches. She looked at him, a multitude of emotions in her eyes.

We are both only human, after all.

Draco didn't know what made him think this, but it had come into his mind unbidden. The truth was, with all the things he had done in the past, there was nothing, nothing, that made him better than this girl, whether her blood was pure or not, whether she was fighting for the wrong side or not. It seemed to physically pain him, this acknowledgement, as if everything he'd ever known was turning on its head.

But then again, hadn't life been like that for a while now?

(Who am I? Who have I always been? Who am I going to be? Is it really up to me?)

The girl swayed suddenly, and Draco saw her eyes rolling up in her head; he watched her fall to the ground in a dead faint, like something out of a dream. He watched another figure fall, a venerable man with white beard and white hair, and calm in his eyes. He felt his guilt close in over his head.

This is war, his father's voice said in his head. People die in a war.

"It isn't my war!" Draco shouted into the silence. As he said it, he felt its truth; it was his parents' war, it was the path that had been chosen for him, not that path that he had chosen.

But did it matter who had chosen the path once you were so far down it that you couldn't turn back?

Could he turn back?

What if he did?

What if he didn't?

Draco looked out over the pitch, and he stood on the edge of a decision that would change the course of his life forever.

He could leave the Gryffindor girl lying on the ground, and she would inevitably be found and tortured. Meanwhile, his life would continue as it had been for the past two years, growing closer and closer to the reign of the Dark Lord becoming complete, losing more and more of himself and everything that mattered to him in the process. His common sense told him to choose this option, to do nothing and let things play out as they would, but his heart seemed to wither when he thought of it.

Or he could make a different choice; go to where she lay, pick her up, take her somewhere where she would be hidden for the night, and help her return unseen to her common room the next morning. And if he did this, he knew he would no longer be able to just follow the Dark Lord's regime blindly. If he helped this girl, something would be different. He did not know quite what it was; he only knew that something in his heart was changing, something huge, and if he chose to protect Lavender he could no longer ignore that change.

He would be on the opposite side of the war then. No matter what his actions were, from the moment he chose helping Lavender over leaving her, his heart would always be on the opposite side. It wasn't logical, it made no sense, but he knew that it was true, because that was what his heart was telling him.

(Who am I? Who have I always been? Who am I going to be? Is it really up to me?)

Draco looked out over the pitch, and there was a streak of light blue on the horizon.

The morning would begin soon; in the next hour, the headmasters and all the teachers would be stirring. Draco had no idea how long he had been there in the pitch with Lavender lying at his feet; it could have been mere seconds, it could have been years. His heart was pounding, but his jaw was set. He blinked his eyes, feeling tears, thinking of his mother and his father and how much they had loved each other, once.

It was the only thing he thought before he stopped himself, stopped thinking completely. He was like a wooden man. His conscience was silent; it had done its work. He lifted Lavender off the ground and turned his back to the night, and carried her inside the castle.

Assignment: As Mars is named after the Roman God of War, I want you to write me a story taking place in one of the two wizarding wars caused by Voldemort and his followers. Your story can be from the point of view of either side of the war, and it can be about any aspect. The mental or emotional effects, the physical effects, during battle, the political side... you can write about any aspect you wish.

Character prompt used: Draco Malfoy

Total word count: 2,075

Gringotts prompts:

Pairing: Draco/Lavender

Feelings and Emotions: Guilt

Figures of Speech: as white as a ghost, change of heart

Genre Specific - Angst: Words: Death, Peace; Plot point: Someone commits or attempts to commit suicide