Disclaimer: I have no legal rights to anything, not even my life.

Reviewers: THANK YOU for your ongoing support and inspiration. MYR, I agree that there is little room for my political views have no place in my story, and I am sorry I subjected people to them – I was responding to flame. To you, all I can say is, having and standing up for political beliefs is not infantile, and I rather think that the opposite is true. But the content of my comments shouldn't matter, all that is important in the story. If you don't want to hear what I have to say (which a perfectly valid desire), simply skip over my blabbering to the main event. Now, on with the show. . .

Ch. 18: Answers No One Wants to Hear

[A/N: Still Wednesday]

After dinner, Hermione and Harry went to the library to do homework. Harry would have much rather have been out with Ron, Seamus, and Dean playing football (Dean had managed to foster some interest in the game after years of advocating its greatness), but he had 'remedial potions' that evening and so was stuck doing homework earlier than he would have wanted. It turned out to be a good thing though, as DM came in about twenty minutes later and nervously sat himself across from his two favorite Gryffindors.

"Hey."

"Hi," they chorused, both a little surprised, Harry a little wary.

DM acted as if the incident in potions had never taken place, and he pointedly made eye contact with both of them. "I have decided to take you up on your offer, Potter."

"What offer?," Hermione asked immediately; Harry himself was a little confused.

DM reached into his book bag and retrieved the ancient book he had been reading that morning. "Potter said that you two would help me get through this debilitatingly dull read that Dumbledore recommended."

Harry didn't know how to respond, but Hermione's curiosity was immediately ignited and she greedily reached over for the tomb and opened it up to its contents. DM leaned over and pointed to chapter four, entitled 'Wandless Magic'. "Dumbledore said that this book might provide me with some answers to my, uh, current difficulties. I would imagine that this is the chapter he was referring to, but I can't get through it, even though I had Blaise cast an English Modernization charm on it. It's worse that our Arithmancy text book."

Hermione flipped to chapter four and muttered, "That's hard to believe."

Harry looked at her for a moment in astonishment, then laughed. Hermione turned to face him. "What? Even I can detect a truly boring book when I see it."

Harry tried to stifle his laughter, but just ended up snorting unattractively, causing DM to smile faintly. "Don't you start," Hermione warned him.

"I wouldn't think of it," DM replied seriously, but Hermione had already launched herself into the ancient text. Both Harry and DM watched her attentively, putting most of their effort into not glancing at each other despite the palpable connection between them. Every couple of paragraphs or so, she would summarize the contents: it was remotely interesting, but not particularly relevant, describing the various advantages of wanded magic. After about fifteen minutes, Harry resumed doing his homework, while DM became so still that Harry suspected that he might have actually managed to fall asleep with his eyes open. After about forty five minutes, Hermione finally uttered the magic words, "Wait a minute. . . I think I found something."

Harry looked up from his essay on Veela (for the next day's CoMC class) and DM startled to attention and blinked vigorously.

"Here, listen to this," she continued. "'Magical strength develops like a muscle: it evolves through physical use, and is intimately tied to the user's body. Magical control, however, is tied to the mental discipline. Usually, magical strength and control develop together as the wizard ages and matures, with control evolving to match a wizard's burgeoning power, preventing dangerous and possibly self-destructive outbursts of said power. However, some of the greatest wizards manage to bypass, through phenomenal mental discipline, such ingrained and reflexive control to access the volatile magical potential within them. In rare circumstances untrained minds are mismatched with or find themselves in possession of bodies capable of greater magic than they are able to control-"

DM snatched the tattered book from under Hermione's scrutiny, and both Hermione and Harry frowned at him. DM was looking paler and more distressed than usual, but he forced a nervous laugh. "Three guesses which category I fall in."

The two Gryffindors watched him with concern etched on their faces, and DM panicked. He grabbed the ancient text and his book bag. "Well, thank you for your help," he blurted, then bolted from the library. Hermione and Harry exchanged worried glances.

Hermione frowned pensively, thoughts racing. Harry tried to understand the situation, "Is it 'cause he's gone mad? Could he have had some breakdown that reverted him to some earlier stage of mental development?"

Hermione slowly shook her head as she considered Harry's theory. In her vast readings she had come across a number of the case studies of St. Mungo's mentally deranged patients (they were a favorite of psychologists), none of which had ever exhibited a talent for wandless magic. "I don't think so. . . even when wizards and witches go insane, the part of them that controls their magic still exists. It's reflexive, like blinking. You'd have to be completely brain dead, but then there's nothing to induce the magic."

Harry frowned as Hermione's words echoed in his mind, 'untrained minds are mismatched with or find themselves in possession of bodies', and a thought abruptly occurred to him. "'Mione, Die-uh, Malfoy has made several comments about his body not belonging to him. And he really hasn't been himself lately, almost more than can be chalked up to having had a traumatic summer. . . " Suddenly he felt a bit sick to his stomach and he had to take a moment to breathe before reluctantly voicing his fears, "Could someone have taken over Malfoy's body?" God, if he wasn't Malfoy, who was he?

Scenario after scenario flashed across Hermione's mind and was discarded. Unwillingly, she finally answered, "I guess it's a possibility. . ."

Forgetting any loyalty that had evolved towards his new crush, Harry blurted, "We have to tell Dumbledore!"

But Hermione wasn't sure. "Dumbledore gave him the book, what makes you think he doesn't already know?"

Harry didn't have anything to say to that and settled for looking distinctly unhappy. "Then what should we do?"

Hermione sighed, how had everything gotten so complicated? Why did everything ALWAYS get so complicated?. "Maybe we should go to the source. You know, confront Malfoy."

That was exactly what Harry didn't want to hear and he looked at the clock mounted on the library's wall and sigh. "Ug, I need think about it, but not right now. Right now I've got to go to 'Remedial Potions'."

! ! ! Break: Merlin damn for always deleting my breaks ! ! !

That night Harry's dreams had DM revealing himself to be a Bond girl, then a Veela, then as Uncle Vernon, then as Voldemort. He woke up screaming around three AM, and in minutes Ron was there. "Harry! What's wrong?! Is it You-Know-Who?!"

"Yes! NO!" Harry took several deep breaths, which helped a little. "No. It wasn't Voldemort. It was just a nightmare. There was a beautiful blonde who was trying to seduce me, then she turned into Voldemort and he tried to kill me!"

Ron looked appalled. "Oh, Harry, I'm so sorry," then he hugged Harry comfortingly until he stopped shaking. Harry calmed himself for Ron's sake, but he remained deeply disturbed, and when Ron eventually went back to his bed, Harry rocked himself to sleep.

Around the same hour in the dungeons, DM hadn't had any sleep the entire night and had moved into the common room to stare unblinkingly at the fire. He knew that even if Harry hadn't figured something out, Hermione would. Anxiety and fear kept him up and he spent hours trying to keep his panic in check and getting more worked up. Thoughts that he had long abandoned popped to mind: maybe he should flee Hogwarts, go back to the forest where he had lived over the summer. It had been maddening at the time, but he was more together now, wasn't he? He could handle the solitude, couldn't he? Mordred strike him down, how could he have been so stupid? He knew better than to invite others into his problems, however useful they might seem! He should have been more careful, he should have tried harder to pass as Malfoy! He was such a failure, such a nothing, maybe he would be better off as a vegetable at St. Mungo's. . . Maybe Malfoy, for all his evilness, was more deserving of this body than him: Malfoy was more of a real person than he was managing to be. He was an imposter! Whatever had possessed him to think that he could do this? It was ridiculous, like a finger deciding that it was going act as its body's brain.

For the first time since it had happened, he allowed himself to cry over what had been done to him, but he wasn't able to cry himself to sleep.

! ! ! Break: Merlin damn for always deleting my breaks ! ! !

DM managed to avoid Harry and Hermione for two whole days, constantly surrounding himself by his Slytherin posse. He was noticeably subdued as well, as though trying not to draw attention to himself: he didn't get in any fights, he didn't act out in class, he didn't even fall asleep at inappropriate times. What he did do is sit and walk and talk as though a hit had been taken out on him. He was jumpy and edgy and his mind felt like it was on speed.

Sitting in DADA on Friday afternoon, he could hear his father's voice in his head, manically insulting him in rhyme: useless, impotent, lame; deficient, stupid, insane; undeserving of your riches and fame; a bleeding shame to the family name; I berate you because I hate you; because I made you and can still infiltrate you-

Snap! DM was sitting as straight as a ruler, every muscle tensed to the point of trembling, quill broken in his clenched his fist. Several of the nearby students gave his strange looks, and Blaise leaned over to say something, but before he could, DM's hand, shaking slightly, shot up in the air.

"Yes, Mr. Malfoy?," Professor Dokar asked suspiciously. Had the Malfoy boy ever raised his hand in his class? Still, he looked. . . distressed and unwell.

"I think I'm going to be sick, sir. May I go to the Infirmary?" DM was rather impressed that he managed to sound relatively collected.

Dokar inspected him for a second more, then nodded. DM was on his feet instantly, and was out the door before the professor had even finished asking whether he needed someone to accompany him. He sprinted down the corridor, he raced to the Great Hall, he dashed through the west gates, then he ran clear across the Quidditch field. Finally, he collapsed breathlessly on the ground and allowed the fatigue to drain away the panic. He was going to be okay. Everything was going to be okay. If he could just stop overreacting. . .

! ! ! Break: Merlin damn for always deleting my breaks ! ! !

Several hours later, Harry and Hermione managed to corner him alone in the library (admittedly, with the help of the Marauders' Map), and sat themselves across from him. He looked terrible, as though he hadn't slept in days.

"We have to talk," Harry stated gravely. DM looked up at them fearfully, as though they had revealed themselves as the assassins he had been hiding from; but, in truth, he had been expecting such a confrontation, and so was not wholly unprepared. Just get it over with, nothing can be worse than what has already passed.

He sighed in resignation. "I know. . . but let's go somewhere more private for this conversation."

They followed him to the nearby Charms classroom in silence, then DM sat himself on the professor's desk. "Okay, let's hear it," he challenged tiredly.

To be honest, Hermione was just there for backup and to satisfy her curiosity, Harry was the one who was really incensed about the situation. "No. Let US hear it. We know you're not Malfoy, as you have claimed several times. So who are you really and what have you done with the real Malfoy?"

DM looked miserable, staring down at his slender hands, and didn't say anything for a long time, much to Harry's irritation. "The real Malfoy died when my father died," he finally offered lamely.

"You're gonna have to do better than that," Harry responded coldly.

DM answered took a deep, ragged breath, "This body was put under. . . the Imperius. So when the caster died, that persona died too. I'm what's left."

It wasn't what Harry had expected and he sputtered, but Hermione had always been quick on the pick up. "So what you're saying is that you're the real Draco Malfoy?," she asked warily, eyeing him suspiciously.

Another unbearable silence ensued before DM finally shook his head sadly. When he spoke, he voice was soft and it wavered fragilely. "No. . . The real Draco died years ago. This body had been under the Imperius for ages, over six years, since before it attended Hogwarts. For a couple of years Draco fought against his father's instructions. 'Make me proud,' that's what Lucius ordered. After a couple of years, and the instructions began to form their own personality, the instructions were too vague, you see, too all encompassing to exist effectively on their own, so they evolved a persona to more successfully execute them. And for a while Draco and the new personality existed together, but how many years can you exist powerlessly, experience horrors committed in your name, without ceasing to be yourself? You don't know how terrible Malfoy was, the things he did: torturing, raping, killing people."

DM's voice cracked and tears shown in his eyes, but he angrily pushed himself on, "It wasn't Draco, it wasn't anyone he wanted to be or even could be. Malfoy was Lucius' perfect son. But how long can a personality take the back seat, watching as someone else interacts with the world before it just ceases to exist? Draco stopped watching through Malfoy's eyes after a year or two, and just clammed up in his own imagination; then after a while, he stopped thinking and feeling too, and by the end of second year, there was just nothing left. A difference that makes no difference isn't a difference at all. He was nothing, and so he faded away."

DM roughly wiped his eyes before any tears could fall, and scrunched up his face to stop from crying, oscillating between anger, anguish, and despair, all edged with a hint of hysteria. Harry tried to digest the new information, torn between horror and pity, while Hermione managed to focus on the missing pieces of the explanation "So who are you then?," she asked cautiously, though not without a hint of sympathy for the emotional wreck in front of her.

DM grimaced in agony. "No one. Nothing. I'm the scraps that are left over when you kill off a body's personality. My mother had been under the Imperius longer than I, almost sixteen years, and she became a vegetable when Lucius died. There was nothing left of her, I guess, nothing left to take control of her body. Or maybe her brain had become so accustomed to living under the Imperius that it couldn't work without it. This body had only been under for six years, so I guess there was something left, some shadow or ghost of one of the previous personalities, because that's what I came from. . . You should have seen me right after Lucius died, I was a wild animal, barely sentient, hardly human at all! I could barely get this body to walk, I didn't even know what walking was. I had no concept of 'I', I was nothing, but there I was, inheritor to a body, memories, a life, a reality that had never been mine! I was a unconscious cloud of detached nothingness before Lucius died, but I can learn and adapt, and I have fifteen years of this body's memories to draw on, and Merlin damn me to hell if I'm not create a personality for this bleeding body out of fuck-all!"

By the time DM finished, his hands were curled into painful fists, dripping blood where nails were digging into his palms; and there was a peculiar shift in the atmosphere, reminiscent of his previous magical buildups, and yet somehow heavier but less explosive. Both Hermione and Harry were looking at him with identical expressions of pity and horror, tinted with concern over the magical shift.

Harry instinctually responded to his pain, and sat himself beside him on Professor Flitwick's desk, and Hermione followed his lead to sit on the other side. Harry felt an urge to place a comforting arm around the boy, but was still too inhibited by the scolding he had received several days ago. "I'm sorry," he finally managed.

"It's not your fault," DM responded stiffly with resignation. The three sat in a ponderous silence for a long time; after all, what could you say after a confession like that?

Finally, Harry tried to ameliorate the situation by addressing something that was weighing on both Gryffindors' minds. "You feel like practicing a little magic?"

DM smiled faintly, a little morbidly. He pushed up his sleeves then held his two arms out in front of him, palms up. Hermione gasped and Harry tensed as two long identical gashes suddenly opened on each forearm and dark blood spilled out, splashing on DM's knees and on the floor; then just as quickly as it had happened, they healed up without a trace. A wave of fatigue hit him and he thought for a moment that he might faint.

This was the first time he had vocalized what had happened, and that act had made the experience more real somehow – an experience that he had been avoiding analyzing for over three months now. He felt a degree of relief at having told someone (someone besides Snape, who had guessed after some strategic hinting), but mostly he felt drained and numb. And so, so tired.

DM stood up abruptly (and a little wobbly) and looked at the seated Gryffindors. "I hope this doesn't change anything between us." When the two didn't respond, DM sighed and moved towards the door. "I'm going to go find someplace to be alone now."

Hermione elbowed him sharply, and Harry forced himself to say something. "Hey, Diem."

One hand on the doorknob, DM looked back over his shoulder. "How about the Room of Requirements tomorrow, after the game, maybe around three?"

DM smiled weakly. "Assuming you're able to catch the snitch by then." Then he was gone.

! ! ! Break: Merlin damn for always deleting my breaks ! ! !

Saturday was the first official game of the Quidditch season: Gryffindor vs. Hufflepuff. Harry was distracted for the entire time, what with being nervous about his upcoming meeting with DM and frequently skimming the crowd to see if he had come to see the game. The blond Slytherin never showed, but Hufflepuff got creamed anyway, the extra time it took Harry to find the snitch being disproportionately occupied by the Gryffindor team's racking up of points.

Meanwhile, DM was sleeping. He had crashed the night before right after his encounter with the two Gryffindors and slept straight through (blissfully dream free) until two pm, when his alarm woke him up. As he yawned and stretched he felt. . . better, more like a real person, than he ever had. He felt. . . calmer, saner, more optimistic. Why had he been so freaked out about telling someone? Now that he had, it was as though a great weight had been lifted. It had been a catharsis, as all true confessions should be, and in some way it had been an absolution as well. The anger, the hate, the fear – it was gone. He would never be able to forgive his father, but what was the point of hating and raging against someone that was dead? The dead don't care or even notice, and only the living are hurt. Being unhappy just seemed so pointless all of the sudden. He had been miserable for so long, he almost forgotten why. Lucius was gone, his Malfoy alter ego was gone, he had managed to create something out of nothing, he had a future. . .

This morning was different, this morning the very air hummed with the delight of life. DM bounded out of bed, bursting with energy and excitement, and had to spend substantial effort taming his grin. He almost skipped into the bathroom, empty at this time in the afternoon, stripped down, then took a brief look in the mirror. His face and body were divine as always, despite brittle blonde hair sticking in every direction like a big albino owl perched on his head. DM stuck his tongue out at his reflection.

"Why, you hansom devil, you know I hate you and all you stand for?," he asked cheerfully. He thoughtlessly flicked his hand towards his reflection and had taken a step towards the shower before realizing what he had done. He slowly turned back around to carefully eye the shattered mirror. The corner of his lips twitched, he felt so alive, and he could feel invigorating magic coursed through him like music. He was invincible, he could do anything!

A whim came to him, and it was elating to be able to indulge it. "Advoco aethra aqua," he mouthed hopefully, confidently, and sure enough, a mist formed above him and a cool drizzle came down to wash him. He laughed as he ran his fingers through his wet hair. Today was a great day to be alive.

! ! ! For Christ's sake, does anyone know how to make breaks? ! ! !

PLEASE REVIEW! And please be nice to me. I ended this on a positive note because I'm so desperate to be happy. Today I learned that I won't be getting my job because of an ordinance violation I received 7 months ago. I wish I could just curl up in a corner and die. =-( I hope you deem my explanation acceptable, I have kept with my original plot line in defiance of frequent temptation to change it.