Dewy palm, cemetery lawn.
Walk alone in gardens of loss.

AUGUST 17TH, 10PM

Severus left in the morning. He fled the apartment as though he were being chased. It wasn't hard for Draco and I to realize why, especially when he seemed to be avoiding me at all cost. I said goodbye before he left but he only turned toward me for a moment and nodded his head slightly.

Draco and I spent the day in silence. He worked on his school preparations again and I sat down once more on the floor with the Harry Potter books spread around me. We engrossed ourselves in our selected tasks and I was grateful for the silence. He seemed to be just as grateful to be left to his own thoughts.

Around nine that night we decided to go out on the balcony and have drinks. Severus had sent an owl around four saying that he wouldn't be back until the next day. There wasn't much of an explanation in his letter for his sudden disappearance; instead it just told us both that he was busy with important matters. Draco said nothing more about it and neither did I.

"You seem to be taking this quite well," Draco said as he sipped his butterbeer. After our eventful night with the firewhiskey we chose something a bit milder for the evening.

"What do you mean?" I asked, slightly confused.

"This," he said as he motioned all around him with one hand, "all of this. The wizarding world, the possible truth about your father, everything you've seen, and you're taking it quite well and I've been wondering why."

"Oh..." was all I could say as I sipped my own drink and tried to put my thoughts into words.

"I lived most of my life alone with my Father. He had no friends and he had no family, so I had no friends and I had no family. He educated me at home and I ended up taking my GED when I was only fifteen, and I passed, he was very proud."

"GED?" Draco interrupted.

"It's a test that a person can take to show that they've learned everything that they would've if they went to high school," I explained, "It's similar to a high school diploma or degree."

"I see," Draco said with a nod and urged me to continue.

"Anyway, Father was very proud and I was very happy that he was proud but after I took my GED there was really no reason for me to stay at home all the time anymore. I became angry at my Father because I finally started to realize how much I had missed out on. I was fifteen years old and I had only met a handful of other children in my lifetime."

"That's kind of sad," Draco interjected.

"Yes, I suppose it was," I said solemnly, "but I was well educated at fifteen and my Father decided to enroll me in online university courses through a two year college. Do you know what I mean when I say online?" Draco nodded his head enthusiastically.

"Yes, it's on a computer right," he asked, I nodded my head in affirmation, "I took muggle studies my last two years at Hogwarts and I may not be an expert but I know enough." He finished with a faint hint of pink on his cheeks almost as if he were embarrassed.

"That's great Draco," I said and his blush became darker, "I sure wish that I could've taken classes on the wizarding world, and then perhaps this would be much easier."

"You're taking it very well already," he said sternly, "You should be proud."

"Thanks," I replied. Now it was my turn to blush.

"Well," he said with a cough, "why don't you continue your story."

"Sorry," I stammered, "Well, after my online courses I began to work for a paper when I was seventeen. I wasn't a journalist at the time, only a gopher around the office. If someone needed something done then I was always there to help. It was just this year that I was promoted and started to investigate my own stories."

"Wow!" Draco exclaimed, "A reporter at eighteen, that's a real accomplishment." My blush returned.

"Thanks," I said quietly, "but it's not a big deal. I already had an insatiable appetite for the truth. That was something I definitely got from living with my Father. After eighteen years of secrets, I desperately needed to be able to find out some truths for myself."

"I still don't have any friends. Sure, I have coworkers but I don't have any real friends. My Father was my only real friend," I added, "and he turned his back on me and left me." I couldn't help the anger that welled up within me as I spoke those last words and Draco moved his chair closer to me so he could put a calming hand on my shoulder.

"I'm sure he didn't mean to leave you all alone," he said as he gave my shoulder a light squeeze, "he probably just had a lot of things that he couldn't work out."

"I suppose so," I said, calm returning to my voice, "If he was Harry Potter then he had every reason to want to die." Draco dropped his hand and took another drink.

"The reason that none of this is really upsetting me is because this whole thing, in some sick sort of way, is what I've wanted all my life."

"How so?" Draco asked.

"It's an adventure, a search for the truth," I explained, "it's something different, something new, something so far away from the little house in the suburbs of Minneapolis, Minnesota that I grew up in that I can't help but take a perverse amount of pleasure in it."

"Wow," was all Draco could say at the moment. He walked back into the apartment and brought out two more bottles of butterbeer. I took one from him and thanked him for his hospitality.

"Do you mind if we discuss Harry a little?" I asked tentatively. Draco seemed to think about it for a moment before shaking his head.

"I don't mind," he answered, "it feels somewhat good to get a few of these things out in the open."

"There's a few things I don't understand," I began, "In the books I read it seems like you and Severus really hated Harry but now it seems like you two really care about him. What's that all about?" Draco stared at me a moment before looking up towards the moon.

"To answer that question I need to explain the past a bit better. You know that Severus was a spy for the Order, and my Father was a Death Eater," I nodded my head, "My Father was more than just a Death Eater, he was the right hand man of the Dark Lord. I was brought up to hate Harry Potter and everything that he stood for. At the end of my fifth year I changed my mind about a few things and suddenly I didn't hate him so much anymore."

"Don't get me wrong," he added, "I still didn't like him, but I didn't hate him."

"What turned you around?" I asked.

"At the end of fifth year my Father was sent to Azkaban," he explained, "I may be thought of us a coward but I knew I didn't want to end up in Azkaban. It was also hard not to ignore the fact that my Father and a group of Death Eaters couldn't take down a group of half trained children."

"There's one thing that Malfoys have always been taught to crave and that's power. After the incident at the Department of Mysteries I began to respect Harry, I couldn't understand why, but I knew deep down that I respected him. I also knew that I had no respect for the Dark Lord and I already had little respect for my Father. My Father bowed down for power, he crawled upon his knees and kissed the robes of another wizard. Harry didn't do that. Sure, he let Dumbledore have an immense amount of control over him but he never lowered himself to the posture of an animal to gain more power and that earned him my respect."

"Why did Dumbledore treat him the way he did?" I asked. Draco sighed and slumped further into his chair.

"They say the road to hell is paved with good intentions and that is definitely the worst thing about Dumbledore, all of his damn good intentions. I believe that he really did think of Harry as a grandson once but when people began dying and the wizarding world began to crumble, Dumbledore decided that the wellbeing of the masses outweighed the good of one. Too bad the one had to be Harry, but I suppose in the end it had to be someone."

"I suppose it's all a numbers game isn't it," I added.

"That's true," he replied, "villains and heroes work in terms of thousands, not in ones and twos, unfortunately."

"People have to do a lot of things that they don't want to in war," I said and then leaned back in my chair to gaze over Diagon Alley.

"Also correct," he said as he too leaned back into his chair, "Harry and I became closer after he defeated the Dark Lord when he was eighteen. He stuck around for about a year after that doing cleanup."

"Cleanup?" I asked in confusion.

"Death Eater cleanup," he explained, "He rounded them up and killed them off. No one really said anything and I always wondered whether he was ordered to do what he did or if he did it because he thoroughly enjoyed it. It scared me to think about him enjoying it but I couldn't say that I would blame him for it."

"That's awful," I whispered.

"Perhaps," he sneered, "but Harry tried to become my friend the best that he could. I think there was a part of him that thought I would understand how he felt for some reason since I had been brought up by a Death Eater. It was a stupid assumption; just because I was brought up by a Death Eater didn't mean that I was brought up around death itself."

"A few weeks before he turned nineteen and left the wizarding world for good he showed up at my apartment with a present," Draco said grimly and I could see his knuckles becoming white as he gripped his bottle of butterbeer.

"What kind of present?" I asked hesitantly. He stood up and walked to the end of the balcony.

"It was a great present," he explained, "it really was. I'm sure in his mind he thought it was the perfect present. It was my Father bound and gagged lying on my living room floor."

"O my God!" I exclaimed and jumped up to stand next to him, "What did you do?" He flinched slightly when I rested a hand over his on the balcony railing.

"I didn't know what to do," he answered softly; "Harry asked me if I wanted revenge. I answered yes. He asked me if I wanted to kill my Father for killing my Mother. I answered yes. He picked my wand up off the floor where I had dropped it in surprise and held it out to me. Then he pulled out a dagger from behind his back and held that out to me. He gave me a choice to pick one."

"I slowly took my wand from his hand and pointed it at my Father. Harry urged me to do it; I could hear him whispering the killing curse in my ear. I couldn't do it though. I dropped my wand and fell on my knees over my Father and cried," tears were running down Draco's cheeks now and I put an arm around his waist to steady him, "I'm not a killer. I don't care if I'm weak; I'm just not a killer."

"What did Harry do?" I coaxed.

"He patted my shoulder and told me it was alright, he understood," Draco answered with a sniff, "Then he walked over to my Father, lifted him to his knees and slit his throat right in front of my face. Blood sprayed everywhere and I remember wondering if there was any end to it. Harry just stood there and watched me with a smile on his face, almost as if he thought he had done me the biggest favor in the world."

"That is so twisted," I mumbled.

"It is but he did do me a favor," Draco answered and I just stared at him in confusion, "He did what I couldn't do, he did what I had wanted to do but didn't have the guts to do, he did exactly what he'd always been trained to do."

"What's that?" I asked.

"The dirty work of course," he answered and then turned around to walk back inside.