Unpredicted Encounter
She was sitting on the curb of the street next to the park. It was in the early morning fog of London that she sat hidden, her arms curled around her knees, looking down at the street. After a full two years of isolation from the wizarding world, it was a wonder she had survived. That world had been her life. She could go back, but not now. Not yet. She wasn't ready. So she sat thus in the early morning fog of London, thinking and turning things over softly in her mind, examining what lay hidden under the rocks that hadn't been moved in so long.
When I heard footsteps, I didn't even turn. They were light, quiet, but there was something heavy about them, too. I heard them stop, heard the sharp but soft hiss of surprise, and then felt them resume once more. Finally, he was standing next to me, and then he sat down on the curb about a foot away from where I turned over the smooth stones, watching the water race by under my feet.
He examined her when she didn't look at him. It was Granger, all right. Three years hadn't changed much about her; she had been seventeen, the last he'd seen of her, a year before she left the wizarding world for a while. Her hair was slightly softer, but still wavy and curly and wild, and her form was a slim as always, and as short. She was wearing Muggle clothes – dark blue jeans, and a plain grey t-shirt, her wavy hair pulled half back from her face, stray strands escaping and being tugged gently by the wind. Of course she wore no makeup; her skin was slightly paler than a few years ago, her lips a light pink, her brows dark. He couldn't see her brown eyes as they focused on the pavement below her, but he could see the remarkable sadness in her face. That was the most prominent change, the sadness. It blurred her features and made the bookworm seem older, wiser, more disheartened and weary than ever before.
"Granger," he finally said, his tone raw with antipathy.
"Malfoy," I returned with equally quiet resentment.
"Fancy meeting you here, of all places," he said, almost to himself. "Not so grand and powerful and brilliant anymore, are you?"
I was just silent. After all, while Harry and Ron had risen to the bait, I'd always been tugging at their arms, pleading with them to hold back, that Draco Malfoy would never be worth it. Suddenly a memory flooded my mind, and for a moment I remembered a time years past, Draco Malfoy turned into the amazing bouncing ferret, and the ghost of a smile twitched my lip.
"What the bloody hell are you smiling about?" he demanded, looking at me.
"Nothing," I said, pushing a strand of hair back from my face. "Just remembering how great you looked as the amazing bouncing ferret, that's all."
To my surprise, he didn't have any snappy comeback. He just snorted and said, "And to think it was a Death Eater that was doing that to me. If I'd have known…"
"Yes, well," I said idly, "none of us knew, did we? Until he almost killed…" There was a sudden lump in my throat, remembering. Oh, Harry, a sad voice said inside me, and I shook my head.
"Potter," Malfoy finished for me, and I nodded, looking away.
"He didn't die in vain, you know," he said quietly a moment later, and I nearly jumped; I'd forgotten he was there. "He was a real prat in my opinion, but he took the Dark…Voldemort…" he shuddered. "…with him, and you can't imagine how insanely terrible that monster was."
I just looked at him. Wondering what had happened to Draco Malfoy. Wondering what had happened to my worst enemy, aside from Voldemort and the Death Eaters. Wondering where the boy had gone that had made my life a living Hell, at least in our early years. We would never be friends, but at the moment, he didn't seem like the world's biggest prick anymore. He seemed like a sad, crumpled human. I suddenly realized how out-of-place he looked without a dark cloak wrapped around his shoulders, without the green Slytherin House crest emblazoned on his clothes. He was dressed as a Muggle, too, but wearing long sleeves, I noticed. Covering up that old Dark Mark, I thought, glancing away.
He suddenly yanked up his left sleeve and shoved his arm under my nose. "There," he said brusquely. "Happy?"
I covered my mouth with my hand. "M-malfoy," I whispered.
The Dark Mark was constantly seething, blood oozing from it randomly. There was a ragged piece of linen wrapped around it, trying to defy the constant flow of blood from the wound. "Yes, Granger?" he said icily.
His eyes met mine defiantly, blazing hatred in the cool grey. "I…" I stammered. "I…I'm sorry."
He yanked down his sleeve and looked away, brooding moodily as he looked into the distance. "So am I," he said bitterly. "You know, you three didn't make my life a day at the beach, either. You were always getting the highest scores, Potter was always performing some miraculous rescue, and Weaslebee…he was good a Quidditch, once he got over his fear of people watching him play."
My temper flared. "And you think I appreciated my teeth growing past my collar?"
"Yeah?" he snapped, getting to his feet. If he'd been wearing the traditional wizarding cloak, it would have had a powerful effect, but it didn't, as he was wearing Muggle clothes. "And what other terrible things did I do to you? It's not like I got your father thrown in Azkaban or anything."
"He was a Death Eater, Malfoy. And you did plenty of damage to us, if I recall correctly. Helping Rita Skeeter. Making our lives a living Hell with taunts and rumours and lies."
He just glared at me. "And you think you had it so bad? You had the entire school except for the Slytherins to back you up. You completely outnumbered us, constantly."
"How about breaking Harry's nose?" I demanded. "And…trying to kill…"
And suddenly my eyes filled with tears and I was looking down and away, anything to avoid that pale grey gaze that said he loathed me just the same as always. "Dumbledore," I finished in a whisper, wiping my eyes on my sleeve.
"Isn't this goddamn mark proof enough that I changed?" he snarled, shoving his arm in front of me again, and I pushed it away. Dumbledore's kind face appeared in my mind; the twinkling blue eyes, the long, silver-white hair, the half-moon spectacles, and that incredible wisdom, all flooded my mind with the overpowering memories of the greatest wizard who ever lived, and the greatest who ever died. I remembered that night so vividly, fighting alongside Ron against Death Eaters as our home, our castle, our Hogwarts was put under attack, and then…Malfoy and Snape…and Harry had had to watch it…the funeral, after all, had been bad enough…
"Granger," Malfoy snapped. "Have you ever felt the Crucio Curse? Have you ever felt the pain it causes? My goddamn sorry louse of a father was in Azkaban – I was given an assignment to kill Dumbledore, or die myself after being tortured for days on end – my mother would die, too, in a matter of time – and you expected me not to go through with it, when I had the chance?"
"But you didn't," I said weakly. "Snape finished it for you."
"Proof, then, that I really am on your side? The world isn't divided into black and white, Granger, and I thought your bushy bookworm head could see that."
I looked up into his pale, blazing eyes, and nodded without really feeling any strength. "Stop," I said quietly. "I get it, alright?"
For a moment we stood there in silence, staring into one another's eyes, and finally, he looked away. "See you around, Granger," he said shortly, and started to walk away. He'd vanished into the fog by the time I thought of a question.
"Malfoy, wait," I called. I heard his footsteps stop. "Why are you here? Why aren't you with our world?"
He was silent for a moment, and then he said, "I did my part. I was done." And then he was gone.