Haven't decided if I'm going to keep this as a one-shot or not
But meet Draco post-Hogwarts. Enjoy!
I love reviews! (: Let me know if I should continue or if it's
fine as is!

The Devil on his Back

Months after the tragedy at Hogwarts, Draco Malfoy threw himself under seclusion for a very significant amount of time. For almost three years, no one had heard from him. Not his mother or father. We were all expecting to hear about it in the muggle newspaper or for people to stop by the Malfoy Manor doorstep. Mr. John Doe, finally found. Dead.

I suppose there is many a thing to be said about Draco Malfoy. I am here to set the record straight. I am here to tell the story of a man who had not one choice in the first seventeen years of his life. A man with a pre-purchased self-destructive destiny. We can twist and turn on the idea of nature vs. nurture and our own right to self-righteousness until our ears bleed. Yes, Draco Malfoy was a bad person. He was arrogant and crude, he kicked people when they were down, judged without knowing and had no moral sense whatsoever.

He also loved his family, probably too much for his own good.

It doesn't justify his actions. There is no excuse. What's done is done. So, why can't we move on?

I ran into Draco about three years after the final war. He was sitting at the front bar of the Leaky Cauldron next to a half empty glass of firewhiskey. It was the first time I had seen him in any magical setting whatsoever in a long, long time. My curiosity got the best of me, I have to admit. Seeing him sitting there as if nothing had happened. Of course, a lot had happened, and the years had taken their toll on him. His hair was longer than I'd ever seen it before and his skin was just a significant shade lighter than his usual abnormal pale complexion. It was his silence that gave away his misery and as I sat down, there were a few minutes of awkward silence where we both acknowledged and recognized the others presence, but neither wanted to speak first, if at all.

He picked up the half-empty glass with his left hand and I noticed something. A ring on his wedding finger. He got married…

"Congratulations…" I finally said. He only nodded, putting the glass down and staring at his hand, as if he could barely believe it himself. "Who is she?"

Asking who the lucky lady was seemed like a comment only friends made to each other, and Draco and I were never friends.

"Astoria…Daphne's sister. She tracked me down after the war. It just kind of happened." How did she manage to track him down when he'd seemed to drop off the face of the earth?

"Your family…?"

"We didn't invite anyone. How 'bout yours?" Draco was only being polite. He didn't really care; we'd never been friends. I wasn't offended by it. After all, I had only asked to be polite. Him suddenly changing the topic, though, gave me the hint that he didn't want to talk about it.

"Not married yet."

"Yet." There was another couple seconds of awkward silence between the both of us. Draco put both of his hands on his near-empty cup of fire-whiskey and leaned his head in towards it, frustrated. "Why are you talkin' to me?" he said with a rather melancholy laugh.

I had no answer. I always had an answer.

"Do I need a reason?" Yes.

At this, he shrugged and took another drink. The cup was now nearly empty, but he kept trying. "I dunno. You always had one before."

There was a reason I had come up to talk to him. Many, actually, and I just wasn't exactly sure which one I wanted to start with. Maybe it was out of my own curiosity or to simply see if he was alright. However, there was one that struck the most obvious. I had to know.

"What…happened to you after the war?"

At this, he laughed as if he knew I was going to ask that. "What do you want me to say, huh? That I drowned my sorrows in alcohol and spent three years of my life in hotels, wallowing in my self-pity? Go ahead and tell that to your pals back home; I'm sure they'd get a kick out of it." He called for another firewhiskey and the bartender came and filled it up. I stared at him the whole time and when he finally looked at me, his expression didn't change. It was the same Draco Malfoy that left, who came back, but his face was different. He was hiding something.

"We thought you were dead."

"And what a tragedy that would be if I were," he mocked, sarcastically. There was another beat of silence as he drank from his glass. I knew not what to say…but Draco did. "How's Greg?" he asked so nonchalantly that you'd think I'd married him. I had no idea who he was talking about.

"Greg…"

He sighed. This wasn't a regular sigh, either. This sigh seemed to affect his entire body into a slump. This question…killed him. "Goyle."

Greg. Gregory Goyle, Draco Malfoy's only official surviving friend, if you could call him that. Friends were rare with Draco, something I noticed over the past eight years of knowing him. There was also the question if Goyle was truly his friend, at all, and that Draco wasn't simply holding on to any debris of normalcy he could get his hands on. I really didn't want to be the one to tell him this.

"He's still in Azkaban." Draco was silent and looked at the firewhiskey in his glass for a while. I'm not sure why this surprised him so much. He didn't get off on a technicality like Draco and his parents had. Gregory Goyle was proven guilty of use of the Unforgivable curses and treachery on all accounts, as well as his father. I couldn't tell him how long he'd be stuck in there for or how long he'd be in there still. A long, long time.

"And my parents?" he asked hesitantly, as if he didn't want to know.

"They're under my protection." Throughout the years, the Malfoy family had given me no reason to trust them, let alone protect them. I could say that it was out of my sheer forgiving nature that I made it my personal interest to see they were exempt from punishment. That wasn't it. I owed them a debt, a greater debt than I could ever possibly fulfill.

"Where did you go?" I asked again, not letting it off. He sighed, not saying anything. "Your parents are worried sick, Draco. They come up to the ministry every day handing out missing fliers and I have to go up to them and tell them that no one has heard of their son since the war. Malfoy, there are a lot of people that are still angry towards your family for what they've done; so it shouldn't surprise you that their imagination has grown quite vivid over the past couple years. We all thought you'd been brutally murdered by a hate group for revenge."

At this, Draco didn't even look at me. He was like a dog who realized he had done something terrible and felt horribly ashamed by it. There was guilt in his eyes, a gulp in his throat, but there was also that stubbornness that never seemed to cease from Draco's face.

"I won't be returning to my family, Harry." After this statement, he took a quick drink and gazed in front of him.

It was the first time he'd ever called me Harry, I think, and, to be quite honest, I can't remember a time where I called him Draco while addressing him. It was a milestone, I guess; but not to Draco.

"So, what am I supposed to tell them, then?" I asked, slightly agitated now.

"Nothing."

"Nothing," I repeated, leaning back in my chair. "After everything that's happened…you're not even going to tell them that you're alive?"

"After everything that's happened?!" His voice raised and the fist clenched around his firewhiskey tightened. "What do you want me to say, Harry? I'm not proud of what I've done, okay? Everything that happened, everything that I've done, was because of that family. I'm clean now. I'm on the wagon. Finally married to a nice girl and throwing my act together." At this point, he raised the sleeve on his arm. "I'm going to be a father someday and I have to look down every time I go to pick up my bloody child and see this on my arm." His lip was trembling at this point and I swear a tear had formed in his eye. "You have no idea what that's like."

"No, I don't," I replied, calmly. "But your parents do."

There was a long pause where Draco and I sat next to each other, and I could tell that Draco was conflicted. He wanted to leave, but he'd been needing to talk about this with someone for a long time. After a couple minutes, he got the courage to speak again. I didn't provoke him. I just listened.

"I left to clear my head after the war," he finally said. "Thought fresh and different air might do me good so I, uh, went to America for a little while. Transferred what little money I had into muggle coin and got a job at a restaurant in New York, living in a Studio Apartment for a bit.

"There was a guy that I met there. His name was Neal and he was originally from London, too, so we got to talking. Just about basic stuff but some events came up like the collapsing of the London Bridge and a couple other oddities. He needed to borrow a shirt one day and happened upon my Slytherin robe in the closet and got all excited. Evidently, his sister was in Ravenclaw, just a couple years older than us. She was a mud-a, uh,…muggle born and the two barely escaped the war making refuge in New York.

"Neal introduced me to her and we started talking about magic and the like, mostly the war. She asked me if I knew you and I told her I did. She got all excited after that. Her name was Celia. Delightful young woman. They knew the Slytherin reputation and asked me about my situation during the war and, uh, I lied. I told them that my family was deeply dependent on Lord Voldemort and I was completely against them. Said I was an outcast in Slytherin, despised my family, and was one of the few that fought for the opposing side. They treated me like I was a hero.

"That's not who I am. I'm not a hero. I'm not you."

"You were on our side, Draco," I finally said.

"No, I wasn't,' he said, very matter-of-factly. "Those two people that I met were some of the best and most genuine folk that I've ever had the pleasure of talking to…and I've spent my whole life prior to that moment despising their kind, watching them be tortured and killed for no other reason besides the fact that my parents told me that that's what was supposed to happen. That's why I left, Harry. That's why I'm not going back."

"They've changed, too, Draco. It's difficult to swallow but you've got to realize that that's the person you were. That's who you used to be and you can't keep blaming your parents forever. Draco…I never knew my mother and father. And it kills me…every day. But you-"

"Oh, don't pull the my-parents-are-dead card. You're too old for that."

I almost smiled. It was a joke. He was trying to be funny. I don't think I've ever laughed at anything Draco had to say. He really was different.

"Your mother saved my life," I told him. To this, he said nothing and his eyes never left his firewhiskey, his hands holding the glass like it was a death sentence. He didn't know. "She never told you?" Draco remained quiet but it was very clear that he was listening. He wanted to know what I had to say. "Voldemort thought I was dead, and he sent your mother over to me to clarify. When she saw that I was alive, she asked me if you were okay. I told her you were alive…and she told Voldemort I was dead. It saved my life."

Draco was quiet. "Didn't know she did that." It chocked out. He really had no idea how much his family loved him.

"Not too long ago, you broke my nose for wronging your father. You're one of the most loyal and protective families I know, except for maybe the Weasley's. What happened?"

"I don't want my son…daughter…to be like me. Like them."

"It's nothing to be ashamed of," I admitted. It's true that the surname Malfoy does contain a certain amount of negative connotation to it; however, that's by no means set in stone. It never has been and, for that matter, I do believe that they've earned the disbandment of such distinctions. All of the Malfoys, even the one sitting before me, who had gotten me into mortal peril more times than I could count, had then since proven themselves worthier than most. Possibly worthier than even me.

"I don't know what I would have done in your birthplace, Draco. I imagine terrible things, possibly even worse. You chose good. Hell, your whole family did. The path you took to get to that decision shouldn't factor in at all; in fact, it nearly helped more than it hurt. We had allies inside the enemy's walls that we didn't even know about."

"Don't flatter me, Harry," Draco scoffed. "Just because my mother saved your life doesn't mean we're cleared. My father tried to kill you, remember? And I've made your life immensely more complicated and traumatic than the Dursleys ever could have accomplished. You don't owe me any favors. I know I'm scum."

"You saved my life, too."

"Yeah, right after I tried to kill you."

It was after this moment that I had begun to understand the mysterious Draco Malfoy. The way he was responding reminded me of the time right before Albus Dumbledore was murdered. He had to prove to himself, everyone, that he was capable of the actions that the Death Eaters had committed before him. My name is Draco Malfoy…and look at all that I have done.

Now, he is convinced he is still that person, and he will try by any means to prove it.

"You weren't gonna kill me, Malfoy," I finally said, ordering myself a butterbeer from the bartender. I could feel Draco's eyes looking at me out of my peripheral vision. "Because, no matter how hard you try to avoid the reality, you're not a murderer. You're not your father." At this, I looked at him and genuinely smiled. "You have too much of your mother in you."

He didn't scoff, like I had honestly expected him to. It was guilt in his eyes that he tried to dilute with firewhiskey. It's why he was here, I expect. Something familiar to test the waters. To find some form of forgiveness in the place of a memory.

"How are they?" he finally spoke. At first I was slightly confused. Then he clarified. "My parents."

"Desperate," I told him honestly. I noticed his grip on his firewhiskey getting firmer and firmer as she seconds went on and then I suddenly heard him choke. His hand had went to his mouth as he tried to prevent himself from breaking down into tears on his barstool.

"Harry, I'm so sorry," he said very quietly, downing the last bit of his firewhiskey again. I said nothing. "I could've stopped them. I could've-"

"Prevented an entire war against a psychopathic maniac? Yeah. Right."

"Luna, is she alright?" he suddenly asked.

At this, my mouth gaped.

"Luna?"

"The ravenclaw you hung around with, Luna, is she alright?"

"She's off chasing wrackspurts in Romania," I said, rather confusingly. "How did you come to care for her?"

"I used to sneak her bread at our manor," he told me. "She was kind to me. Probably one of the few that was."

"She is that," I sighed, my mind wandering to her. Wondering if she was alright. If she was safe. At one point in my youth, I suppose I did fancy her. How could you not? "She sees the light in darkness. Probably one of the more fortunate people for you to make an acquaintance with."

Draco, again, said nothing. Only pursed his lips together and nodded. He avoided my eye contact all together and simply raised his finger to call for another drink. Yet another firewhiskey appeared before him and down the hatch it went.

"I didn't come here for my family, Potter," he said, finally looking at me.

"Then why did you?"

"I came to ask you for a job."

I paused, confused. "As a what?"

"An Auror."