Author Notes: I don't really know what the plan is here. I actually wasn't planning to write this at all, but then I did. I hope to update every one to two weeks, but I'll have to see how it goes. So far, it's primarily Draco's point of view, with a bit of Harry's to help fill in the blanks. I think it'll stay that way. The rating is subject to change depending on what I write.

Feedback is always appreciated, and keeps me writing fast.

Thanks to wandsonly for being a fabulous beta.

There was no reason to go back to Hogwarts. No reason at all, except that if he didn't, everyone would talk about how Draco Malfoy had backed down. How Draco Malfoy had lost his nerve, how he was too ashamed to show his ugly ferret face. (And wasn't it just grand, that part of Potter's legacy had been to leave him that name?) How he was a coward.

Malfoys were supposed to know what was being said about them, but act as though they didn't, and Draco knew what people would say if he didn't go back. Nobody would suspect that maybe he was tired of being constantly watched and just wanted to stay home with his mother, who would be under house arrest for the next several years. Or that he didn't need his NEWTs because it wasn't as though anybody would hire him anyway.

Nobody would suspect that the reason he didn't want to go back was that he was still plagued by nightmares, ones that involved people he loved falling into large, consumptive flames, or a snake faced man stroking cold hands across his chin and telling him to torture someone, for the greater good.

Nobody would suspect any of those things, and Draco didn't want them to. If nothing else, he would retain a semblance of normalcy. He would sneer at the Gryffindors, as though he didn't realize that they'd won. He'd do well in Potions and Charms, and manage to pass all of his other classes with decent enough grades. He would date Pansy, and find a minion to replace Crabbe, and make fun of the Weasel for being poor and Potter for having no family and Longbottom for everything else. It would be hard, but not impossible, and it wouldn't break him.

After all, he was a Malfoy. And if living in the same home as the darkest wizard of all time wasn't enough to break him, he didn't see how anything could.

All the same, he hadn't thought that the attempts to break him would start so soon. Draco had assumed they'd wait until the second day of classes, at the very least. And he certainly hadn't expected to be cornered by angry fifth year Hufflepuffs (whom he was pretty sure he'd tortured last year) on the train, only to remember that his mother's wand didn't work particularly well for him. If he'd had his old hawthorn wand, he'd have been out of this situation within a minute, but as it was, it was all he could do to keep up a Shield Charm under their continual assault.

"Oi!" yelled a voice from the corridor. The Hufflepuffs turned, and between them Draco saw the Weasel, standing with his wand raised.

"What are you playing at, attacking another student? Haven't we had enough of that in the past few years?" Then he caught sight of Draco, and his face shifted. "Oh, it's him. All right then, carry on."

"Ron!" cried Granger's bossy voice. "Just because you don't like him doesn't mean you can let students attack him! You're a Prefect! Merlin." She turned to face the Hufflepuffs. "Detention for all of you, and believe me, next time I catch you attacking a fellow student it'll be worse."

"But he fought on You-Know-Who's side during the war," a girl whined. "He tortured students."

Granger faced the girl grimly. "Lots of us did things we shouldn't have during the war, myself included. But the war's over. Now scram!"

They did, many of them throwing glares at Draco over their shoulders. Granger nodded stiffly to Draco, then left. As she walked away through the corridor, he heard the Weasel say, "You know, I think I'm rubbing off on you. Since when do you say things like 'scram?'"

"Oh, be quiet Ronald," she said, in pleased tone.

Draco cast silencing and locking charms on his compartment, took out a book, and ignored the people staring at him as they walked past.

It was his last year at Hogwarts, the war was over, and if he could just make it through the next eight months he could move on with his life.

If only the bloody Hufflepuffs would stop smirking at him as they walked past his compartment.

When the train reached its destination, Draco disembarked as he always did, and tried to pretend that everything would be the same as it was before. Within a few hours, the illusion was permanently shattered.

Nothing was the same, and Draco had a hard time pretending that it was. For a start, he wasn't in the same dorm anymore. The dorm Draco had spent the last seven years of his life in had cycled back around to the first years, and the eighth year Slytherins were placed in a room that had been added just for the year, and was only staying around because of powerful magic.

The absences were noticeable everywhere. Millie and Vincent were gone forever, and Theo had decided to finish school at Beauxbatons, where he could study without people blaming him for who his parents were. And there were others, younger students whom Draco wished he'd thought to find out the names of. Now it was too late for many of them.

At the start of term feast, Professor McGonagall gave a long speech about the students who had been lost to war, the importance of house unity, and some changes in the following year. Included was a measure to raise awareness about Muggle culture: every class had to include a unit about how the subject was thought of or used historically by Muggles. At the end of the speech, she made a toast to Harry Potter, and again spoke of the urgency of the school banding together, and protecting the students who had fought to save the Wizarding world.

She looked pointedly at the Slytherin table when she said that, and made no suggestion that the children of Death Eaters might need protecting, too.

"The war is over, and we all need some help moving on with our lives," she said, sweeping her audience with a majestic gaze. "It's important that we continue to remind ourselves and each other, both by words and actions: the war is over."

The war was over, but not for him.

Some nights, when everything became too much, Draco would climb to the top of the Astronomy tower and try to remember what had led him to make the choices he had. It had all seemed so clean-cut and understandable, until the night that he stood here with his wand up, and couldn't cast the curse that would save him. Couldn't move, couldn't do anything except stand there and wait for something to happen.

He hadn't been able to make anything go the way he wanted it to.

Vince was dead.

Sometimes Draco wished he was dead, too.

Every once in a while, when he was up here, he thought about just jumping, leaving it all behind. Flying for a moment, without a broom or magic, and then he would be gone. But he couldn't bring himself to see it through.

Just one more thing he wasn't good enough to do.

Several days after the start of school, Potter returned his wand to him. "Sorry I kept it so long," he said, with a slightly uncomfortable shrug. "I forgot it was yours, actually, Hermione was the one who…"

"Save it, Potter," Draco said, taking the wand. "I don't need to hear your excuses."

"But—"

"It doesn't matter." Draco started to walk away, secretly glad that he had his wand back. Not glad enough to thank Potter, obviously (why should he have to thank him for returning stolen property?), but glad nonetheless.

Then Potter went and wrecked it. "Malfoy, wait."

Draco turned around, having only made it a few steps away. "What is it, Potter?"

"Just—if you need anything, let me know, okay? I know it can't be easy being back here, with all of the memories and everything."

Draco noticed absently that Potter needed to get his hair trimmed; he kept pushing it out of his eyes as he spoke. "I'm touched," he said drily. "But somehow I doubt that you could be of much help to me."

This time he made it almost across the hall before Potter called his name; far enough that he could pretend he hadn't heard him. He hid near the classroom until the minute class started, so that Potter wouldn't have time to finish what he had to say. Draco sat down in Defence right as the class began.

Defence Against the Dark Arts was the worst class by far; Charlie Weasley was teaching it this year. Draco had considered dropping it from his schedule, but after consulting his mother they agreed that he probably needed to take it if he had any hope of getting a job. Taking a class dedicated to eradicating evil might help to clear his slate of some of the other things he'd done. If not that, then at least the reverse was true: nobody would consider his repentance genuine if the first thing he did after being given only a (not insignificant) fine for his actions was to drop Defence. People would almost certainly talk about how Draco Malfoy cared more about the Dark Arts than defending himself from them. Now that he'd sat through a few classes with this man as his professor, Draco almost didn't care.

Bloody Weasleys.

Weasley wasn't the only new teacher. Professor Slughorn had left Hogwarts to go back into retirement. Potions was now being taught by a small, waspy man named Professor Newton. He was nice enough, but one hour in his class and Draco was confident that he knew more about the art of potioneering than this man ever would. If he could sit for the NEWT without taking the class, Draco wouldn't be bothering to sit through it. Newton was also the new head of Slytherin, but that didn't bother him much; if Snape couldn't be head of house, Draco didn't care who was, and this man was a good deal less slimy than Slughorn.

The new Transfiguration professor was, annoyingly enough, another Weasley. Draco didn't know this one's first name, but he knew that at one point he'd worked for the Ministry. He pretended not to know Charlie's name either, and referred to them as Dragonbreath and The Prat, although not to their faces, of course.

It was during Defence that Draco realized that the wand was behaving strangely.

He'd never learned to do a proper Patronus Charm, so practicing with the class was a humiliating affair, made worse by the fact that Potter's fan club was making corporeal Patronuses by their first, second, and third tries. Draco was still struggling to make anything happen, struggling to even create a wisp of fog.

Dragonbreath walked purposefully over to him. "You're clearly not thinking of a happy enough thought." His tone was curt, and it was clear that he was only helping Draco because his job required it. This attitude made Draco's blood boil, and he responded without thinking, without remembering that this was a professor he was talking to.

"I'm having trouble picking one. See, I can't decide whether I want to use the time your father got in trouble with the Ministry for commenting to the paper without leave or the time your twin brothers got a lifelong ban from Quidditch for attacking me," he said, flashing his patented Malfoy sneer.

Dragonbreath looked as though he'd been punched. "Detention with Filch at 7:00 tonight, Malfoy," he said, staring at him with a steely gaze. "And if you continue to talk about my family in that way, I'll make sure you regret it."

All that Draco regretted was that he hadn't taken the time to word his insult with the elegance he usually preferred. He turned back to the point on the wall he was trying to pretend was a Dementor and said, without really expecting anything, "Expecto Patronum!"

In a flash, a peacock burst out of the end of his wand, and he almost laughed with joy, thinking about the time he'd found out he was a wizard and been taken away from his abusive aunt and uncle, and how happy—

That wasn't his happy memory.

Whose memory was that?

His eyes darted to Potter, who was walking around as though he were in charge, correcting people's postures and making suggestions. He seemed to be doing more of the teaching than Dragonbreath, quite frankly.

Potter had had his wand for a long time. Was it somehow his memory?

Draco brushed the thought aside. Something strange had happened, and it probably had to do with his wand being gone so long, but no way did that memory belong to Potter. There was never a time when Potter was abused, never a time when he wasn't spoiled and pampered within an inch of his life. He remembered that day during first year, on the train, when he'd extended his hand in friendship to the boy and Potter had just sneered and implied that Draco wasn't good enough to be friends with him. No, whoever the memory belonged to, it certainly wasn't Potter.

He was still trying to figure it all out on his way out of class, too distracted to notice the Weasel standing right in front of him, tapping his wand against his hand menacingly. There were few enough eighth years that all of their classes were held together, so the Weasel had heard everything he'd said to his older brother.

"Oi!" he said when Draco attempted to pass him. "You think I'm gonna let you through after your crack about my brother?"

"Which one?" Draco asked coldly. "And if you're planning to attack me, you'd better do it quickly. People are trying to walk in this hallway, you know, and you're in the way."

"What do you mean, which one!" Weasley yelled, his voice cracking. "Fred, my brother Fred, why'd you have to pick him to make a joke about? Why couldn't it have been Percy, or Bill?"

Draco was about to ask why in the name of Merlin it mattered which brother he had made fun of, but the Weasel had evidently decided they were done talking. Before Draco could even open his mouth, he cast a Jelly-Legs jinx, followed quickly by a non-verbal spell that had Draco hanging upside down by his legs.

"How dare you," Weasley growled, the expression on his face almost animalistic. "How dare you talk about Fred that way?"

A crowd was beginning to form, and Draco was so humiliated that he almost couldn't stand it. His lifted his wand, thinking he was going to prove to the Weasel that Malfoys could attack even when being suspended upside down, and once again his wand did magic he wasn't prepared for, dropping him back to the ground. What the hell was that? he thought. Unbidden, the spell he'd just done appeared in his mind: Liberacorpus.

A spell he'd never in his life heard of, let alone used.

The Weasel's face contorted in rage, but then his bushy-haired girlfriend appeared at his side. "Ronald!" she scolded. "Leave him alone."

"He started it!"

"For heaven's sake, Ron, just because he started something doesn't mean you have to attack him in the middle of the corridor." She took his arm and pulled him firmly away from the crowd, scolding him further as she did so.

Just to prove that he didn't need to be rescued, he called after them, "Hey, Weasel, it's a good thing your Mudblood girlfriend was here to save you."

"Ignore him," Granger said soothingly, stroking the Weasel's arm softly.

"He called you a Mudblood!"

"Ignore him. He's harmless."

He was harmless, and that was exactly the problem, wasn't it? Draco picked up the items he'd dropped during his unseemly time being held upside down and put them away, then walked through the hall purposefully, eyes ahead, looking at and seeing no one.

He was almost to the library when Potter appeared from an adjacent corridor.

"What are you doing here?" Draco demanded, with his best Malfoy sneer. "And don't say you're here to study, because in all my time at Hogwarts I have never once seen you come to the library. Or study at all, actually." This wasn't strictly true (he remembered vividly several times in fourth year when Potter had been bent over books, flipping through pages as though his life depended on it,) but it was true enough that he figured he could get away with saying it.

"I followed you."

Draco groaned. "Haven't I seen enough of you for one day?" He leaned against the wall and sighed. "Very well, get it over with." He would have thrown in an insult, but so far today his name calling hadn't gotten him anywhere, and he didn't want to push his luck. The school was already out for his blood; they'd be even worse if he attacked their precious Golden Boy.

"I wanted to explain Ron's behavior." Potter leaned against the opposite wall, imitating

Draco's posture. "He was—well, he was a right prat earlier, but then, so were you."

"Get on with it, Scarhead." Come to think of it, a little bit of name-calling wasn't a bad idea at all.

"Fred died. In the battle last year." Potter seemed to think that was enough information, and from the look on his face, he thought it explained everything.

"Fred, who in the name of Merlin is…oh." Draco blinked a few times, as though there were something in his eye. "He was one of the twins, wasn't he?"

Potter nodded meaningfully. "So you can see why Ron was a little touchy about hearing him insulted. Twisting the knife in the wound, so to speak."

Draco took a deep breath, feeling suddenly as though he were about to cry. He had to maintain control. "A lot of people died in the war, Potter, and not all of them were on your side." He pushed himself away from the wall. "You know, I don't think I will study in the library. Too many Mudbloods and Muggle-lovers for my liking."

Greg didn't follow him around anymore, and Draco didn't try to force it. Having Greg around only reminded him what had happened to Vince, and all the ways that it was his fault that things had happened the way they had. That night, though, when he heard Greg crying himself to sleep at night, he wished that he could go across the room and comfort him.

He didn't. He just cast a Silencing Charm on Greg's curtains so that he could cry in peace, and fell into his own nightmares. When he woke up, he was curled in a ball and hugging his knees to his chest. He didn't realize he was crying until he reached up his hand and felt his face, which was wet. At first, he thought it was blood; it would have made sense with the dream he was having, and he wasn't really thinking straight. When he realized the truth, he did a Tempus Charm to make sure it was too early for anyone else to be awake, and left the room. Like hell was he going to let anyone see him cry.

Draco had never been able to comfortably cry in front of people. It made him feel weak, like everyone around him was judging him. Malfoys didn't show emotion, because it was too easy for people to use it against them. That was why, when Potter had found him crying in that bathroom sixth year (which felt much longer than a year and a half ago,) his first thought had been to attack. To run. To deny. But attacking was the easiest and first thought in his mind, and it fit well into the pattern between him and Potter: fight first and ask questions later.

He made it to the top of the Astronomy Tower, panting and out of breath, before letting himself cry in earnest. He curled up on the ground, clutching his knees again, and had just enough wits about him to cast a Silencing Charm. After that, he didn't hold back. Draco had always had a knack for repressing emotions, but when he let go, they burst out in full force. When he cried, it was like this, loud and ugly and painful, and most of all, unseemly, which was why he didn't let himself cry in front of others. Worst of all, he'd never mastered the art of breathing and crying at the same time, resulting in huge hiccupping gasps between tears that reminded him that he was showing emotion (and Malfoys weren't supposed to show emotion, weren't supposed to have emotion, so fucking tired of emotion,) that he had let go of the mask he had so carefully designed.

Being up here made things worse, not better, but he didn't climb back down and find a better place. He didn't deserve a better place to cry. He deserved this, needed this reminder that if he had been better, worked harder, hell, moved a little bit faster, everything might have turned out differently. He could have accepted Dumbledore's help and been safe. He could have killed Dumbledore right away when he was supposed to. He could have done anything but what he'd done, anything but fucking hesitate, and things would have been very different. There were a thousand paths and ways that he could be less broken and hurt, but he'd chosen the worst one, and now he was sitting here crying about it like a little kid instead of dealing with his actions and moving on.

When he got back to the common room, Pansy was sitting in front of the fire, poking it with a stick and scowling. She looked up when she saw him enter.

"Where've you been?"

"Out."

"You look awful."

"So do you."

She nodded. Pansy hadn't tried to kiss him since before the Battle of Hogwarts, and the absence of her as a force in his life was still unnerving. Draco sat on a chair far away from her, and tried to pretend the question wasn't burning in his mind, but it was still there. Finally, he looked at her and asked quietly, "What changed? Between us, I mean."

She looked back in the fire, avoiding his eyes. "Would you have wanted it all to stay the same?"

"Of course I would. We were happy."

Pansy snorted. "Like hell we were. We were all lining up to die for our parents' dreams, Draco. That's hardly what I'd call normal teenage behavior. Don't you know that most seventeen year olds are doing everything they can to distance themselves from their parents?"

"Just because it wasn't—typical, of people our age, doesn't mean we weren't happy." His voice was hoarse from sobbing, but he knew that if he didn't mention it, Pansy wouldn't either. "So what changed?"

"You did, Draco," she said, pulling invisible threads from her nightgown. "And I did too. I don't want to be who I was anymore." She looked up to the ceiling and yelled, suddenly, "You hear that, Mom! I don't want to be me anymore! I don't want to keep fighting and watching my friends die because of your stupid choices! STOP TRYING TO FUCKING CONTACT ME, BECAUSE I'M NOT COMING HOME! So stop it. I'm not you, mother!" Tears slipped down her eyes, but she just brushed them away; Pansy had never had trouble crying in front of people.

Draco crossed the room as quickly as he could and took her in his arms, as he had many times last year when she'd been too tired to go on. She was all sharp, awkward angles, and hugging her made him feel as though he had to be careful, or he might get cut. "It's okay, Pansy. But you have to stop yelling, or Newton will be in here asking what's wrong."

She pushed him away, retreating even farther into her corner of the couch. "I don't want you anymore, Draco," she said, tears still falling silently from her eyes. "Do you understand? I don't need you. I can take care of myself."

Draco got up off the couch. "Just put a Silencing Charm on the room if you want to keep yelling. Some of us want to get some sleep."

Pansy sniffed, and pulled herself upright. "As if. As if any of us could sleep after all that's happened. Don't lie, Draco. Even if I wasn't yelling, you wouldn't be able to sleep."

"You don't know me, Parkinson," he said coldly. "I've been sleeping fine. But I suppose you have more that you regret doing than I do."

"You've been crying," she said when he was halfway across the room. Draco didn't have a good response to that, so he just pretended not to hear her and kept walking.

When he got back to his dormitory, Draco pulled the curtains around his bed and cried again, this time as quietly as he could.

When would everything stop being broken and painful and go back to normal?

Draco's days fell into a pattern. Wake up, or, more likely, never have even fallen asleep, drink as much coffee as he could in the Great Hall (he found out that the cups would turn any coffee after the first three he had into decaf, so sometimes when he was feeling really shitty he'd get someone to give him their cup so he could get more caffeine) make jokes about people he didn't like, wish that he could talk to Greg, go to class, wish that Pansy would go back to being silly and frivolous and fun, study, forget to eat, remember to eat but only have a few minutes to spare, then go to bed and hope that tonight he might get more than a few hours of sleep.

After a few weeks of this, Potter passed him a note during a lecture in Defense Against the Dark Arts. Draco was positive that Dragonbreath had seen him, and equally positive that as long as it was Potter who was passing the notes, it wouldn't matter one bit who saw it.

Malfoy, are you all right? You look ill. You should go to the Hospital Wing.

He crumpled it up, not willing to even dignify that statement with a response. Potter tried again.

You seem tired. I can take notes for you, if you want to sleep.

Once again, Draco crumpled it up.

I'm not going to stop writing you notes until you answer.

I'm trying to pay attention, Potter. Unlike some people, I can't count on passing a class based purely on the professor being my friend's brother.

He waited until Dragonbreath wasn't looking to pass the note. While the professor might have been willing to ignore note-passing when it was Potter doing it, Draco couldn't be sure the same would apply for him.

You're sure you don't want me to take notes for you?

Oh, and of course nobody would notice I was sleeping. Use your head, you prat.

What about a Skiving Snackbox, then? I think I have a few Nosebleed Nougats in my bag.

Potter, you are truly daft. Do you really think Weasley won't notice that I'm using a product that his brothers invented?

You might not even need one. You really do seem ill.

I'm touched. For a moment there, it seemed like you almost cared about the poor Death Eater.

Death Eater's son, you mean.

Death Eater.

You didn't have a choice. Anyways, you're avoiding the question. Are you all right?

I'm fine. Now sod off.

Very convincing.

Sorry if I don't live my life thinking of ways to get you to believe me, Potter.

I've seen how much coffee you drink, Malfoy. You're clearly not sleeping.

And you're clearly far too interested in my food habits.

As Potter was writing a response, Dragonbreath cleared his throat. "I'm sorry, Harry, but I'm going to have to ask you to stop passing. I'm sure you already know all about sending messages through Patronuses, but I can't make exceptions to the rules."

"I understand, Professor," Potter said, sounding far too comfortable for someone who'd just been reprimanded. Draco wondered, not for the first time, how well Potter and Dragonbreath knew each other.

As soon as they left the classroom, Potter cornered him and began to talk. "You really don't look too good."

Draco put on the best sneer he could under the circumstances. "I didn't know you paid so much attention to how I looked."

"I just want to help you."

"I don't fucking need your help."

"I know you don't need it. I want you to have it."

Draco sneered. "You make it sound like you're offering me some priceless gem. However can I repay you? Would you like me to get down on my knees and kiss your feet?"

Potter just looked at him, and he knew that this sort of situation called for desperate measures.

"Why don't you go help your Mudblood girlfriend? She's looking pretty awful herself. Pity that those scars will never go away, isn't it? My aunt Bellatrix charmed that knife herself, did you know? Wanted something that would make the humiliation permanent—not that permanent was ever very long for anyone who went up against her."

Harry glowered. "Except for Molly Weasley, of course, who killed her with the oh-so-sophisticated Stunning Spell. You know what, Malfoy? You don't want my help? Fine. I won't help you. Figure your own life out from now on. Oh, and I'll stop telling the DA not to attack you. You do know that that's been the only thing keeping them away, right? But if you don't want my help, you don't have to have it."

Potter stormed away, leaving Draco feeling surprisingly hollow.

Harry stepped into the portrait hole. "Arse."

Ron and Hermione looked up at him. It was Ron that responded first. "You know, mate, I'm not exactly sure what you were expecting to accomplish here. We've always known Malfoy was a prat."

Hermione looked between them, seemed to decide that they could handle this on their own, and went back to her book.

Harry sat down next to Ron on the couch. "Yeah, but something's going on with him. You've seen how pale he is."

"How pale who is?" Ginny asked, coming from across the room to join them.

"Malfoy," Ron said, seemingly torn between annoyance and amusement. "Harry's convinced he needs saving of some kind."

Ginny sat cross-legged on the ground, facing them. Turning back to the chair she'd been on, she quickly summoned a large cushion to place at her back. "Malfoy? Why?"

Hermione sighed, and looked up from her book once more. She even went so far as to close it, although she kept a finger on her page to mark it. "Isn't it obvious?"

Ginny and Ron both turned to look at her. "Um, no?" Ron offered.

"Yes, it is! This is just an extension of his saving-people thing, combined with his Malfoy obsession."

"Excuse me, I'm sitting right here!"

"Come on, Harry, you know I'm right. When, in our entire time at school, have you not been obsessed with Malfoy?" Turning back to Ginny, she started ticking them off on her finger.

"There was Malfoy-is-the-Heir-of-Slytherin, Malfoy-is-a-Death-Eater, Malfoy-is-up-to-something-but-I-don't-know-what-yet; there was bound to be Malfoy-needs-me-to-save-him-for-some-reason eventually."

"Hey, I was right about most of those things!"

"Which has only reinforced the idea that you know exactly what's going on with Malfoy and what he needs. And I wouldn't say most; you were completely wrong about him being the Heir of Slytherin. Anyway, I think my point stands: this is just an extension of your saving people thing."

Ginny nodded slowly. "That does make sense."

Ron looked relieved. "As long as you're not in love with the prat. You had me scared for a little while there."

Harry snorted. "Yeah, right. Did you honestly think I'd fall for a Death Eater?"

"Not to mention that he's a bloke." Ron didn't speak for a few moments, then said, "Do you really think you're going to accomplish anything, though? I mean, I respect what you're trying to do and everything, but—I'm not sure you can redeem him."

Hermione nodded. "I agree. I'm not saying don't try, but don't be crushed if it turns out he's beyond saving. I get the sense from him that he's not going to do anything he doesn't want to."

"I know."

Ginny bit her lip, then said, "Just don't let him affect you, okay? It's fine for you to try to help him, but I don't trust him one bit. He still calls Hermione a Mudblood."

Harry thought about pointing out that the way Malfoy said Mudblood was different than it had been before. It sounded much less cruel, and much more like it was being said out of habit.

Then he thought of Malfoy's cruel joke about Bellatrix torturing Hermione. "You're right," he said finally. "Some people are beyond saving, and Malfoy might be one of them."