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**** DRACO ****

War changes you. That's what they all say. It takes the strongest of warriors and tears them in two. It takes the most unlikely of soldiers and turns them into heroes. It makes you vulnerable, threatens your existence, and exposes you to atrocities that you should never see. Atrocities which — no matter how hard you try to put them behind you — never leave.

You are led to believe war is an adventure — a brave and courageous fight for the betterment of all — but it's far from it. War is not fun, war is not exciting, war benefits no one, and those people who romanticise it clearly have never fought in one. There is nothing romantic or elegant about it. To go to war is to stare death in the face. And every day, death stares back at you, unblinking, right in the eye. And because of that, you are forced to bury all your feelings, forced to look past the horrors, forced to make decisions that no person should ever have to make.

You're little more than a number, a pawn in a much bigger game of which you know almost nothing about. You are sent by men — who think they know better — to kill others, and they are ordered to kill you. And you do it, without question, because the lives of those you love are threatened with unspeakable horrors upon your refusal.

But when all is said and done when the celebrations of victory are over, amongst all the romanticism, the praise and the honours, a different horror arises. The dark side of war. The part they leave out. The part they would rather have remain in the dark. The part they don't tell you is that war holds those who survived to ransom — strong, weak, brave, cowardly — it doesn't discriminate and the horrors never leave. They dull somewhat, but at the most unlikely of times, they pull you back down and remind you all over again of just how fragile human life is, how fragile your own life is. They remind you of the pain and the suffering and the fear.

And worst of all, they remind you of the deaths. The cold-blooded deaths. The senseless deaths. The agonising, brutal deaths. The intentional deaths.

And it was those deaths — the bloody, screaming, nightmarish deaths — that took me from who I was then and made me who I was now. And the person I was now, was not the person I thought I would ever become.

The only thing anyone was right about was that war does change you. My life changed. Everyone's did.

But, despite the events that changed the lives of all those involved, the world continued to turn, time ticked away at its usual pace, and everything was as it should be. The sun rose and fell as it always did. Birds chirped, dogs barked, the wind blew. People scurried through the crowded streets on their way to someplace important, and the relatively safe world that they lived in continued on its merry way.

But try as I might, I could no longer face the world I had once lived in, and the world in which I now existed held little interest for me either. Everything around me was irrelevant — I cared for none of it. Time, for me, had stopped, and my life had become equally irrelevant.

I would wake up. I would look around. I would fill my days with endless nothingness. And those days became a blur of sameness, one day would simply bleed into the next in an endless cycle of light and dark.

I hated the person I had become, but mostly I had come to hate the person I was back then. It was a constant internal battle to keep the thoughts of who I'd been out of my head. The loathsome, spoiled brat. The bigoted coward. The snotty rich kid who looked down his nose at everyone, including his friends. I had lived my life without a care, with money to burn, and with a name which I thought commanded respect.

But in the end, it was all for nothing.

My father had rotted away in his jail cell, fighting tooth and nail against his sentence. But his efforts were all for naught. The sentence stood; it was two years since The Kiss had been ordered, so he now spent his days pissing in his pants and drowning in his own drool.

My mother had been exiled, with little chance to return. She was under house arrest on a small island off the coast of Norway with none of the luxuries she had spent her life surrounded by. And she would hate it. She would hate the cold, the isolation, the solitude, the minimalistic lifestyle — all of it. But I guess that was the point, to make her life so miserable that she wished she'd gotten the same sentence as my father.

And I knew that I shouldn't have hated my own existence — or so I had been repeatedly told. But it was impossible not to. I had degenerated into a shadow of who I once was, and saw no reason whatsoever to return to the person I once had been. My name no longer mattered. My family no longer existed. My friends had all been pushed from my life. I was alone, and that was how I wanted it to stay.

It hadn't been solely their decision, not really; I hadn't given my friends much choice. I had convinced myself I didn't need any of them and pushed them all away. They had wanted me to talk, to share, to tell them all what was going on in my head, but sharing feelings and appreciating the simple things each day — the little things that made the world turn — was complete bullshit.

The simple things. What a joke.

I hadn't seen a sunrise in ages — mornings were not a part of my daily schedule — and sunsets basically indicated that it was time to hit the pub. The streets were loud and far too crowded, the sky was dull, and I didn't give a rat's arse about stopping to smell the roses.

Roses had thorns that simply caused more pain.

Pain, hurt, and anger. And the disgust at what I had done, how I had acted, never went away. Scotch numbed it somewhat, but the memories, the terror, the never-ending screams, all haunted me each and every day and made my life hell.

And now, that scotch was numbing the pain some more.

"That barstool will have your name on it soon." Eddie the bartender was saying. "You spend more time here than you do at home, I think."

"You don't want my money?" I shrugged a shoulder, "I'm more than happy take it elsewhere."

He laughed, "Oh, I like your money just fine. I'm just watching out for you."

"Thanks, Dad." I rolled my eyes.

"And maybe you should go outside, maybe spend some time in the sun." He grinned, placing another drink in front of me, "You look like a bloody vampire. All you need is a cloak and some fangs."

"Nothing wrong with vampires," I grinned back at him, "Sleeping during the day is the best way to avoid people."

He laughed at me and then shook his head, moving back down the bar. It was the same conversation we had almost every time I came in here. He'd tell me to go outside, I'd tell him to serve me more scotch.

I watched him as he chatted with the few others along the bar, observed the ease with which he laughed with them, and the twist of hatred I always felt when I saw someone enjoying their life tugged at my insides and I had to tamp it down. He was simply a guy, working to pay his way, not disgusted at his existence, and I shouldn't hate him for it.

"Malfoy?"

I started, my spine stiffening, my body tensing. The voice that spoke my name was one I knew. One I was very familiar with. But it was the one I had hoped to avoid for the rest of my life. I squeezed my eyes shut and prayed that maybe she would walk away if I simply ignored her.

"Draco?"

I felt a hand on my shoulder and I winced. I didn't want to be touched — hated to be touched — and I certainly didn't want to be touched by her.

I opened my eyes, turning my head slightly to look at her. Her face was surprised, eyes wide, mouth slightly agape. But it was an expression I was all too familiar with. It was the exact same look that I saw on the face of anyone who happened to recognise me.

"Granger," I mumbled and turned back to my drink, downing it in one swallow. I nodded to the bartender and he filled my glass again, liquid courage was what I would need for this encounter.

"May I?" She gestured the seat beside me. I shrugged, indicating I didn't care where she sat, and instinctively shrank deeper into myself when she actually sat down. I didn't look at her, hunching my shoulders and keeping my eyes lowered to the drink in front of me. I didn't want to see her. Didn't want to see any of them.

She sat quietly — which was not what I expected. The Granger I knew would have barely taken a breath and peppered me with a million questions, and I would have ignored each and every one of them. But her silence was even more unnerving and the only thing she said to break that silence was gin when Eddie noticed her sitting with me and asked what she was drinking.

"You know him?" Eddie asked.

"I used to," she told him and thanked him politely when he placed the glass in front of her. "We went to school together."

Eddie looked between us both and snorted a laugh, "You sure you've got the right person, love? I'd say looking at you both, you went to very different schools."

"He was actually one of the smartest students in our class." The defensive note in her voice surprised me and I chanced a peek out of the corner of my eye. Her shoulders were set, and she was looking at Eddie with an expression that told him to not be so judgemental. "We took different paths, that's all."

Eddie held his hands up. "No foul meant, love."

She gave him a curt nod, which should have made me smile, but all it did was infuriate me. I didn't need her fucking defending me.

"What do you want, Granger?" I snapped, not looking at her. "Why are you here?"

"I'm meeting some friends," she said, not seeming to be bothered by my coldness. "I'm early, that's all."

I didn't respond, wanting instantly to be as far away from her as possible. Meeting friends? Wouldn't that be brilliant? They could all see me and mock what I had become. They would love it. All the years I had spent taunting and mocking them would all come back on me.

"Are you alright?" She asked quietly, the genuine concern in her voice was hard to miss. It shocked me. Why would she even care?

"Why do you care?" I asked, my thoughts escaping me. I turned to glare at her, but she wasn't looking at me with sympathy, or pity, or even disgust. She had a small smile on her face, a smile which made no sense. She should hate me, should have been laughing at me, should have been shouting to the world how Draco Malfoy had turned out. But she wasn't. She was sitting here, smiling, asking me if I was alright.

"No one has seen you in…" She trailed off, frowning, as if trying to remember the last time she saw me. "We were all worried."

I snorted. "Worried? Yeah, right. You were all worried about me. Arsehole extraordinaire, Draco Malfoy. I find that very hard to believe."

"Draco," she put her hand on my wrist, "Of course we've been worried. You disappeared—"

I wrenched my hand away, stopping her. "Don't, Granger." I finished my drink and stood, "Don't do the sympathy thing, don't pity me, don't pretend I'm someone you even like. I'm sure your Gryffindor cronies will be here soon. You can tell them all how you saw me, and the state I'm in. I bet you'll all have get a good laugh."

I dug into my pocket, not missing the widening of her eyes when she saw the Muggle money. I threw a handful of notes on the bar and walked away from her, ignoring her calling my name, and stepped out of the pub. I covered my head with my hoodie, hunching my shoulders and hiding my face from the passing crowd, barely looking up as I trudged through the streets, ignoring everything but the sound of the ice and snow crunching beneath my feet. The icy wind whipped around me, stinging across my bare skin and I shoved my hands in my pockets. The winter had been particularly harsh, but I hadn't bothered with anything more than the hoodie I was wearing. I usually would have had a gut full of whisky before heading home, the warmth of it numbing me and any effects the cold may have had. But Granger's untimely arrival put an end to that.

I slammed the door to my flat, locking it and curled my hand into a fist; my need to punch something was all encompassing. I closed my eyes, taking a deep breath, calming my thoughts. It wouldn't help, punching something. Violence wasn't what I needed; experience had taught me that cut up hands just caused more pain.

I had rented the flat, not caring about the size of it or where it was. I just wanted to be away from everyone and everything, and that's what the tiny space allowed me. I had managed to remain hidden, completely out of sight, not wanting to see or hear or think about the world I had grown up in, the world that had suddenly become the thing I loathed most.

And The Manor it most definitely wasn't — sparse was a generous description. A single bed was shoved in the corner, an old couch split the room, and a small table was all the furniture that the room held. A short counter attached to the wall held a hot plate and a small fridge made up what I kindly called the kitchen. The flimsy curtain which hung in the second doorway hid the dank and dingy bathroom, a room which was so tiny I was barely able to turn around in it.

The entire space was smaller than what had been my dressing room at The Manor. And while there was once a time I would have turned my nose up at anyone who would have lived in such meagre surroundings, the small space was now more than I needed.

The only concession I made when I rid myself of The Manor was the library. I had it shipped and stored in Gringotts, and every few weeks I would have a goblin exchange books from my vault. It was my only contact with the world I once lived in, and in truth, it was more contact than I truly wanted.

And before tonight, it had been more than a year since I'd had any contact with anyone from the world that I used to know.

My chest constricted and I felt the sting of tears in my eyes, the burn in my throat. I swallowed hard. I hated this. Hated that I couldn't control my emotions anymore.

Granger. Why did it have to be her?

She was the one person I tried never to think about. She was the one who caused me the most pain. Hers were the screams which haunted me the most. They were the ones that still woke me in the night, crying my own denials, telling myself that such things couldn't possibly have happened. And those screams were the reason I drank to numb the pain, proving yet again that I was nothing more than a pathetic coward.

And that cowardice was why I had isolated myself from everyone and everything. Solitude was the only thing I could depend on. Solitude was how I coped. Solitude ensured I was reliant on only myself, and that I owed no one a thing.

Solitude was the one thing that made my life easier. Without the constant scrutiny, without the whispers, without the pointing, I managed to exist. And the armour that I built around myself ensured that no one got close. Keeping everyone away ensured that no one was disappointed when I inevitably let them down. Because that's what I did, it was what I was known for — looking out for number one, and not caring who I stepped on to achieve my goals.

But, of course, none of that mattered to me anymore. The only way I could now live was to blend in, keep my head down, and stay quiet — become a shadow. I wanted as little baggage from my old life as possible. I had the bare essentials and nothing more, no matter how dismal my surroundings now were.

I turned to the small window that looked out over the city, millions of lights almost turning the night back into day. There was a time when I would have looked at this city — and the people who resided in it — with contempt, but now they were my salvation. I was a nobody in this world, just another nameless face, and I was happy with that. My name out there meant a doorway to my past could be reopened, a doorway that I had long ago closed. Opening it once more meant the questions would start again, the accusations, the looks of disgust, and everything I had distanced myself from would resurface and turn my life to hell.

I had spent my entire life trying to prove myself — to my father, to my friends, to the people I thought mattered — but now I couldn't even look at my own face in the mirror; all that was reflected back at me was cowardice, and bigotry, and fear. I saw in my own eyes the hatred I had been taught, the intolerance, the lack of empathy — empathy that I had always been told would make me weak. A weakness that would not be tolerated.

A weakness that now burned my insides. I didn't need to be jailed, I didn't need to be punished, I had my own living hell inside me. I had blood on my hands that could never be washed away. I had the memories of what I had done, and who I had done it for, and that alone was my sentence.

And when it came down to it, this war had been pointless. Yes, the Dark Lord had been vanquished, his minions had been rounded up and locked away, but those of us who remained were given a much harsher sentence than all of them combined. A life sentence, if you will, with memories of torture, of brutality, of pure evil.

This war hadn't taught me to be strong, or resilient. It hadn't taught me to forgive and forget. This war hadn't brought me any kind of peace.

No, what this war had taught me was that if I hid, if I lived in the shadows, if I remained nameless and faceless, if I didn't care about anything or anyone but myself, I had nothing to lose...

...right?