Harry Potter and all its characters and storylines belong to J.K. Rowling.

Chapter One - "A Scream Ripped From His Throat."

"Another one?" asked the bartender in a Southern drawl, eyeing the just-emptied glass set before her. "Honey, you already had - "

Draco Malfoy waved off her concern. "On my tab," he interrupted, concentrating hard on his speech so as not slur his words. She was right of course; he'd had more than enough to drink already. The world had dimmed and blurred and his senses had dulled. He couldn't think very straight and was having some difficulty remembering a few things, but that was the point of getting drunk, wasn't it? He was trying to forget about everything, and alcohol was his solution.

"Alrighty then," the bartender said. She gave him a smile that might've been flirtatious as she poured him another glass. "You wanna kick up de alcohol upuh notch, honey?"

The Malfoy heir frowned at her. "What're you going to add?"

She gave him a wink. "Ne'er you mind, sweetie. It'll taste good, and dat's what mattuhs. Pull upuh stool. I'm dyin' for someone tuh talk tuh fo' uh bit, and you looks to be a smart 'un. You're quite uh handsome 'un too, ain'tcha?"

The bartender was keeping the glass of alcohol, which happened to be the thing Malfoy was interested in right at that moment, just out of his reach.

"Nuh uh," she scolded teasingly. "Lemme finish makin' yuh drink, sweetheart. It'll be even bettuh than what youse had befo'." She grinned widely at him. Draco noticed quite abruptly that she was missing several of her teeth and wondered how on earth he'd missed this detail before.

"I just want the drink," he told her, concentrating once more on his speech.

She ignored him. "I don't know whatchur doin' out at a bar like dis," she was saying, clearly trying to flirt with him again. "And tuh be honest, I'm suhprised nobody's been sayin' much tuh yuh, or buying you drinks or somemat, wid all you good looks."

He brushed off her comment like it was nothing more than irritating fly and wondered, not for the first time, why he kept coming to this bar, when the bartenders kept trying to flirt with him. She was not the first one.

"Say, honey," she said, seeming to realize that she'd lost his attention. "You got some girl friend of yourn?"

Well, that was brutal and straight forward, no suggestive hints at all. Straight out stating what she was clearly interested in.

He didn't need to let her know the truth. It wasn't her business anyway, the fact that he was single, miserable, and swamped in a hopeless state of depression despite the crisp and cool Malfoy demeanor he'd managed to keep with him throughout all his trials and tribulations.

"Yeah, I've got a girlfriend," he lied easily. She was still mixing his drink, and he'd given up the hope of getting it any time soon. Perhaps that was a good thing. Maybe it was just the overly loud music combined with all he'd had to drink, but his head had started to pound obnoxiously.

At these words, the bartender raised her penciled eyebrows. "Really? I ain't seen you with no girl today, hon. Where she at? Where your girlfriend at tonight?"

Draco couldn't suppress a sigh from escaping him. He blamed this show of weakness on the alcohol, but the bartender was triumphant, as if this sigh was all she needed to prove her point.

"You ain't got no girlfriend, do yuh, sugar?" she said. "Well, I ain't one tuh be makin' fun of yuh for dat, 'cause I ain't seein' nobody mahself, but I tell you what." She paused to lean underneath the bar counter and emerged only a few seconds later with a paper umbrella for Draco's drink in her hand. It was pink in color, decorated with white flowers scattered like snow. She plopped it tastefully into the drink she'd been mixing and slid it almost seductively over to Draco, who looked down on it and wondered what the bloody hell she'd done to his alcohol.

"Tell yuh what," she continued, leaning forward as far as the counter would allow. "I ain't seein' nobody, but youse certainly mah type."

Again, she was brutal and straightforward with her intentions.

Draco didn't respond to her. There was a humming in his ear that was completely unrelated to the music and chatter in the background. He aimlessly stirred his drink with the pink umbrella, wondering whether he should drink it or not.

"What's in this?" he asked, indicating his drink.

The bartender frowned, looking immensely displeased that he hadn't said anything about her offer.

"It's mah specialty," she replied. "But dat's not what's important heah, sweetie. Lemme try agin. I thought I was bein' clear befo', but lemme try agin. Let's start ovuh. Mah name's Wendy. And you, handsome, what's yo' name?"

He didn't respond again, instead leaning forward to take a tentative sip of the concoction in front of him. It wasn't too bad, but Draco's body wasn't in the mood for anymore alcohol. He was up and off of the stool in seconds, fleeing from Wendy the bartender and the drink she'd made him and leaving her to look very disgruntled. Not for long - another man had attracted her attention and she was already turning to pepper him with sweet words.

Draco, on the other hand, found the nearest bathroom, flung open the first stall, and crouched by the basin of the toilet, his guts swirling around like a hurricane. He waited a few moments, waiting for something to happen, and then when his insides finally settled down, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Now he was standing up, heading to a sink to wash his hands and splash water on his face to clear his thoughts.

Looking into the mirror, Draco wasn't sure what he saw. A man with conflicted feelings stood staring back at him, his grey eyes like mirrors themselves, reflecting everything they saw and hiding everything they felt. But his face was not so stoic; he looked exhausted and done, with bags under his eyes and his lips drawn down in a permanent frown. He tried to muster up the energy to sneer condescendingly, but other than a slight twitch to his mouth, his face didn't move at all.

He looked much older than his twenty-one years of age. And, Draco supposed, he'd seen much more than an average twenty-one year old. But that didn't matter. It didn't matter that he and his family had suffered just as much as all the other families in the wizarding war that had dominated the last year of Draco's Hogwarts career, and it certainly didn't matter that he and his family had ultimately proved their loyalty to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix.

All that mattered was the fact that the Malfoy's had started out as Death Eaters, and Death Eaters worked for Voldemort, and would you look at that, Voldemort was the Order of the Phoenix's enemy, so therefore no matter what, the Malfoy's must be evil and our enemy too.

Draco supposed it was fair. He couldn't complain about the trials that he and his parents had gone through as things settled down. They were reasonable, really. They'd deserved to go to Azkaban, in his mind.

But instead, of the three Malfoy's, only Lucius had gone off to prison, receiving the blunt of the blame thrown on his family. Narcissa was under house arrest for an unknown amount of time. The Ministry said ten years, but everyone knew that the truth was undeterminable. The Ministry just didn't want to think about or deal with former Death Eaters.

Azkaban would've been fine. So would house arrest, though Draco thought he might've eventually gone crazy if he'd had to wander the corridors of Malfoy Manor for ten years, unable to go out. But no! In an unexpected turn of events (which later Draco realized were not so unexpected), Harry Potter, the Golden Boy, Boy-Who-Lived, et cetera, had spoken at Draco's trial, defending the Malfoy heir. And after that, Hermione Granger had spoken, briefly, in his defense as well, and even the weasel bastard had uttered a few words. Draco was sure it was only in hope of gaining the Muggleborn's good opinion.

So no, Draco had not ended up with a prison sentence. Instead, he'd gotten a year of suspension from magic of any kind, and when he returned to the Ministry the next year to get his want reissued, they'd delivered the rest of his sentence; five hundred hours of community service.

Additionally, Draco had been struggling to find a job in the magical industry. But nobody would hire him; "We don't know if we can trust you," was the general message that seemed to be sent by potential employers. He'd considered a Muggle job, but then decided he had to keep some of his dignity and pride.

To say the least, life had not been easy for him the last four years.

And the toll it had taken on him was quite clear, if the mirror in the bar bathroom was to be trusted.

He sighed again, regretful. "Sometimes," he told his reflection in the mirror, "I wish that I could start all over again."

His reflection said nothing back to him, and he said nothing back to his reflection. Instead, they just watched each other, identical expressions of sadness on their faces, watching each other watching each other, waiting for words that neither of them had. Finally, Draco looked away, covering his face in his hands.

"Look at me," he muttered. Then he looked at the ceiling. "Merlin, I'm so drunk. I hate everything. Malfoy's aren't supposed to get drunk. Urgh."

He was back in a stall again, and this time he was throwing up.

-.0

"Sugar! I was wonderin' where yuh went off tuh so quickly like dat, sweetie." Hardly having set foot from the toilettes, Draco found himself under the attentions of Wendy, who'd abandoned her position as bartender, once again. She patted him on the head as if he were nothing more than a puppy, mussing up his blonde hair that was probably already a mess anyway.

"Boy, youse sho looks ready to pass out on de floor any minute now!" she said, her voice shrill. "S'okay, dat's what's supposed to happen at bars, you know, wid all de alcohol and such. S'okay too, 'cause you still looks good. Say, I'm offa work now – got de manager to let me off early than normal – what you say tuh goin' down to a theater and catchin' a show? Just to start off – if yuh feel like doin' somemat else," – she winked suggestively – "all you has to do is say so."

Ugh. Draco still felt ill. He was really regretting all he'd had to drink, more than before. He could hardly think straight. So he said, "I wish I was eleven."

She laughed as if what he'd said was the funniest thing she'd ever heard. "Oh, honey, don't we all wish we was eleven again? Mind you, when I was eleven mah parents was so ovuhprotective. They wouldn't even let me talk to no boys 'til I moved out when I was seventeen. But dat's beside de point. Whatchu say 'bout dat show I was talkin' – hey, where you goin', sugar!"

She yelled words that didn't compute in Draco's mind as he disappeared into the crowd of dancing and drinking people, quickly disappearing from her sight. Pushing past multitudes of masses, he finally made it out of the bar and into the cool New York night.

That was where he lived now. New York, New York, America. He'd moved there a year ago, this October, in hope of escaping some of the British media attention and attention in general. Somehow, New York kept reminding him of his first years at Hogwarts. He wasn't sure how – Hogwarts, for one, was a magical castle in the countryside, whereas New York wasn't even in the country. It definitely had magical roots, but Draco had yet to encounter any type of magical thing, fantastic beast or wizard or otherwise.

But New York was a fresh start, where Draco could try to make amends and begin his life again with a clean slate, where he wasn't known for his pureblood roots or his mean demeanor or his ties to Voldemort.

It was cold for a September evening. Trees had turned orange and red and some had shed their leaves already. Draco took the subway – he still had limitations on travelling with magic, even though he was almost half a world away from the British Ministry and he'd been allowed a wand for three years now. It was also difficult to Apparate in such a busy city. Night certainly didn't chase people off the streets in New York; rather, it seemed to bring even more out. People at night had a different vibe than people during the day did. And even with the brightly lit lights of stores along the street brightening the world, Draco never felt completely comfortable walking about alone when it was dark.

Especially when drunk.

His apartment was small and messy, but relatively cheap to rent, which was what Draco was looking for. The Malfoy fortune that might've been his to inherit had gone to the Ministry as another recuperation for the war and the repair to damages it had caused. So Draco, for once in his life, found himself unable to depend on the source of money that had always been there; he had to work to keep change in his pocket, but he still didn't have any sort of job; instead, his mother sent him monthly checks with just enough money to get him through the month (there probably would've been enough to save up, but he kept blowing it all on drinks), money taken from the Black fortune, which Potter had been generous enough to grant her access to.

Draco definitely didn't want to think of how much he owed Potter at this point in his life. The boy he'd hated since he'd refused to shake Draco's hand at school was basically Draco's only source of income, basically the thing keeping him alive.

Sometimes Draco wished that he'd died in the battle of Hogwarts so he wouldn't have to deal with Potter anymore.

But it was what it was, and thinking about anything at all when he was this drunk was annoying and painful. He collapsed on the bed in his apartment, fully clothed. His last decipherable thought was, what if I'd done things differently when I was younger? Then sleep kissed him away from the world of consciousness, and dragged him down to incoherent dreams.

-.0

Birds were singing when Draco woke up the next morning. He kept his eyes closed, waiting for a massive headache that was the consequence of hangover to kick in and agonize him. He was surprised and delighted when the pain didn't come, and snuggled into his sheets, trying to savor the blissful feeling of waking up from sleep before he had to get up.

He was startled beyond words when a loud peacock cry interrupted the birdsong.

Why the bloody hell am I hearing a peacock in New York City? he wondered, and then it occurred to him that he shouldn't even be able to hear birds singing over the hustle and bustle of traffic below. He whipped out of bed, only to find himself tangled among bed sheets and utterly confused. This wasn't his apartment bedroom. Why was he sleeping in a gigantic king size bed? Why was he wearing the silk green pajamas that he'd had throughout Hogwarts? Why was he in his old bedroom at Malfoy Manor? How had he gotten here over night?

I must've been really drunk, he thought.

There was a knock at his door. Hoping that his mother might enter and explain everything that was happening and the reason for his appearance at the manor, Draco called out, "Come in!"

The shock of seeing Dobby the house elf enter the room was nothing compared to the shock of hearing the sound of his voice. It was high and young-sounding, nothing like the lower tenor it had become after puberty. Draco's hands flew to his throat.

Then it occurred to him that one, Dobby was no longer the Malfoy's house elf, courtesy of one Harry Potter, and two, Dobby was dead.

"Time to get up, Master Draco!" Dobby's high voice interrupted his thoughts. Draco focused once more on the far too cheerful looking house elf and tried to comprehend what in the name of Merlin was going on. Almost unconsciously, he felt himself rising out of bed, and then Dobby was persistently pushing him along to the bathroom joined to his room.

"Hurry, young Master Draco!" Dobby squeaked. "Dobby was told to tell you that the Master and the Mistress to be expecting you downstairs!" The house elf bowed low to the ground, his long nose brushing the carpet. Then with a pop, he was gone, leaving Draco to wonder if he'd imagined his encounter with the deceased Dobby.

Then he looked into the bathroom mirror, feeling a brief feeling of déjà vu as he recalled looking at himself last night in the bathroom at the bar. There was a moment of silence as he drank in the sight of himself, and then his grey eyes widened in shock, and a scream ripped from his throat.

Sorry for the bad Southern accent spoken by Wendy. Also, for any mistakes and for slow first chapter.

Things'll get more interesting later. Please read and review. Thank you.