A/N: I apologise for the shortness of this chapter. I'd forgotten I'd even written this chapter, but I think it's important that I keep it in, even if it's not exactly what you may have been hoping for. Enjoy!

Keeping Hope Alive

The next few weeks were very hard ones. He couldn't say they were the hardest of his life – not after everything he'd been through – but they were hard in a way he'd never really experienced before. Every little thing reminded him of her. He couldn't sleep in his own bed without remembering the time she'd slept in it, couldn't walk down the street without bringing back some painful memory. He'd taken to apparating to work so that he didn't have to walk past the shop where she worked, and spending much of his time at his parents' house to avoid the chance of running into her by accident.

His mother continued to be more supportive than he had ever known her to be before. In the absence of his father – who remained in his study and refused to join them – their relationship deepened, unhindered by the necessity of conforming to Lucius' rules and living up to his expectations. Draco couldn't help but wish he'd been able to see this side of his mother when he was younger, but was aware it was partly his own fault. He'd been so focused on achieving his father's approval and love that he'd failed to notice the one parent whose love didn't require winning, and had been available to him all along.

He started to work later and later at the restaurant, offering to cover shifts and work overtime in an effort to busy himself with something. After a couple of weeks of this, Neville tackled him about it. Draco was clearing up after a busy evening, the only person left, having offered to finish up in order that the others could leave. Walking into the quiet room, Neville sat on one of the tables.

"Mal- Draco," he said, "Leave that for a moment, I want to talk to you."

Nervously, Draco set down the brush he'd been using to sweep up and came over to perch on the table opposite Neville's. He still couldn't quite believe that Neville, the old victim of his bullying, would do him such an enormous favour, and found himself panicking every time he was called over by either Neville or Hannah, worrying that they'd changed their minds. He couldn't afford to lose this job. Not now that it was one of the few things keeping him going, making his life worth living.

"Drake – do you mind if I call you Drake? I know it's what the others call you. I reckon it's a good way of putting the past behind us, allowing me to treat you like a different person." Draco nodded numbly; surprised that Neville saw the same benefits as him to the name "Drake".

"Drake, are you okay?" Neville asked, his voice concerned, "I mean, I appreciate all the extra work you've been doing, but I'm not sure it's really very healthy. Do you want a couple of days off, or maybe you should work shorter days for a little while? Just to rest for a little bit. You've been very pale lately, and Hannah's been worrying about you. She thinks you're tiring yourself out."

"I'm fine," Draco said shortly. He didn't want to work less. That would just mean rattling around in his flat on his own, or walking endlessly around Muggle London, trying to avoid any of the places they'd visited on that wonderful first day.

Neville sighed.

"Look, Drake, it's not just Hannah's who's worried about you. I know you've just been through a break-up, though Hannah won't tell me much about it cos she says it would be betraying Astoria's confidence, but this isn't a good way to deal with it. You're going to make yourself ill."

"And why would you care?" Draco asked, looking Neville straight in the eye. It was a question he'd been eager to ask for a long time. "Why should you give a damn about my wellbeing? I don't know why you even gave me this job in the first place; I can only assume you did it as some sort of favour to Astoria or whatever. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate it, but you can stop now. You've done what Astoria asked you to, and you don't owe me anything else. You can stop pretending that you don't hate me."

Neville sighed again. He was silent for a moment, and seemed to be collecting his thoughts, finding the right words.

"I don't hate you," he said eventually, "And you're kidding yourself if you think you've ever had enough significance in my life for me to waste time and energy hating you. Well, maybe a bit in first year, until I realised I had something you didn't. I had friends I didn't have to prove myself to. They all knew I was a slow, clumsy, forgetful kid whose only special talent was the ability to get everything wrong, but they chose to be friends with me anyway. Whereas you put on this act all the time and projected an image of a smart, cool, talented guy who always had everything under control, and yet every one of your "friends" was using you. And I guess … I guess after that I felt sorry for you."

Draco bowed his head. He must have been pretty pathetic, that even Neville had pitied him. It struck him, too, that Neville had been a very perceptive person.

"And then as I got older," Neville continued, "I began to realise that there were similarities between the two of us. The way you behaved around your dad was the same way I behaved around my grandmother. I was always desperately trying to live up to her expectations and never quite succeeding. And I suppose it was good that all the things she wanted from me were at least good things. I think that if her dream had been for me to become a perfect little Slytherin and then a Death Eater, then I'd have ended up fairly similar to you, or I'd have tried to best to."

Draco snorted disbelievingly. Neville would never have ended up like him. He was too … good. There was something so perfectly pure and heroic about him, a bit like Potter. His grandmother's expectations had held him back for a little while, but nothing would have stopped him becoming a hero in the end. He was a Gryffindor, and that's what they did.

"And then the Carrows took over Hogwarts, and I was so busy with the DA and stuff I didn't really see you much," Neville went on, "But there were a couple of Slytherins in the DA, and they mentioned you sometimes. Daphne was one of them – Astoria's sister – and she told me about something you'd been doing. She said that you'd offered to take the detentions for the Carrows a couple of times a week, the ones where you were supposed to use the Cruciatus Curse on them. And obviously because you were a Death Eater the Carrows trusted you, but according to Daphne you just pretended to do it, and got the kids to scream a bit. That surprised me. I think that was when you really gained my respect. Considering you had to go back to Voldemort every holiday, and the chance of the punishment he would have bestowed if he'd found out, not only on you but also on your parents. I even considered approaching you at one point to ask you to join the DA, but I thought it would probably be too dangerous. The Carrows wouldn't dare to punish anyone too badly, which was why I could allow students to take the risk of joining, but in your case there was the danger of Voldemort punishing you, and that wasn't a risk I was going to ask you to take. But I appreciated what you were doing for the kids in detention. They came to feel like my responsibility over that year, and anything that prevented them being too seriously hurt was a good thing."

Draco found himself thinking back over that year. Faking those detentions had been the least he could do for those poor kids, and it had been nice to be looked at with gratitude rather than fear or disgust. He'd had incredible admiration for the DA, and the way they'd kept hope alive among the students. They'd kept his hope alive, to some extent.

"I'd have joined," he said at last, "If you'd asked me to join, I would have."

"I know," Neville said quietly, "That's why I didn't ask you."

They sat in silence for several minutes, each pondering their own thoughts. It was nice to think that he had been of some help during that year, and that he'd in some small way gained Neville's respect. It made him realise what a truly incredible person Neville was, to be able to feel anything but contempt for someone who had once bullied him. While Harry Potter had been incredibly generous in insisting the Ministry pardon his family – and Draco was very grateful – he doubted they could ever be sitting here having this conversation. Only Neville was capable of truly giving him a second chance like this.

"Shall we start again?" Neville asked, breaking the silence, "I've seen a different side to you lately, and I'd like to get to know this new guy, without all that rubbish from the past getting in the way. What do you say?"

Draco looked up with a small smile. For the first time since Matthew had walked into that café, he felt a spark of hope inside. Perhaps he had lost Astoria, but here he was gaining a friend he had never hoped to gain. He nodded. Neville stuck out his hand.

"How do you do?" he said with a grin, "My name's Neville."

Draco took his hand and shook it.

"Hi, Neville," he replied, "I'm Drake."