Disclaimer: There's this rumor going around that I don't own the characters, the setting, or the plot. I'm here to let you know that, well... the rumors are true. It's not mine. I'm just warping it for my own amusement.

I felt like a hunter stalking my prey.

Not that this was a new feeling. Everyone remembered all too well the Second War. It hadn't been that long ago. We all remembered what it felt like to track someone, crouching behind inanimate objects, waiting for the perfect time to strike.

War makes humans into animals; it turns the world into a game of survival of the fittest. And I'll be damned if those muggle-loving blood traitors hadn't been the fittest.

I certainly hadn't seen that coming. After all, if I had, I would've changed sides long before the time I did.

I wasn't "loyal to a greater cause" or some other complete rubbish like that. Unless, of course, the cause was called "Let's Keep Draco's Beautiful Head In It's Rightful Place On Top Of His Broad Shoulders." Which of course no one's cause but mine had been.

And so, yeah, I became this primitive beast, seeking out my supposedly less intelligent prey. But you know what? They weren't stupid, and they had magic on their side too. Yeah, the Death Eaters thought they had that under control with extensive knowledge of Dark Magic, they hadn't expected the other side to resort to learning those sorts of spells. They honestly thought those filth-loving wizards would just sit around and let the "dark side" slaughter them with evil magic.

I guess that's when you could say the lines between good and evil, light and dark began to blur. I mean, yeah, the initial reasons for fighting the war were still there. But at the end of the day we were just killing ourselves off. Forget the muggles being a threat to our survival, we'd successfully become our own worst enemies. But that realization didn't stop anything. We were all too far gone by that point.

And that's where I am today: too far gone. Too invested in some thing -- some idea of what the future should be -- to pay the slightest attention to the ends I'll go to for the end result I'm looking for.

But what is it that I am doing?

I'm going to kill for the first time since the war ended. And it wasn't even as if I had taken all that many lives during the war either. I hadn't exactly been on the front lines, so to speak. My failure involving Dumbledore had displeased the Dark Lord very much. And rather than kill me he opted to let me suffer with my guilt and made me a servant of sorts to Professor Snape.

He protected me when he could, but he wasn't always there. It was in those moments when I was attacked on my own, when I retaliated. And I wasn't retaliating against blood-traitors either, it was my own people. Even my own father one time. But I guess you could say I caught him slightly off guard. He always had underestimated me. Underestimated how much I blamed him for everything that was my life. Because if it hadn't been for him maybe I would've turned out all right. Or, at the very least, a fraction less fucked up. But, as they say... "he created his own monster." And you know what monsters do. They kill. Because they can.

But that's beside the point. Isn't it? ...I have to believe that's beside the point.

So there I was, once again throwing myself into the muggle world. And let me tell you something about muggles. They're weird. Talking into these miniscule bits of plastic while racing around in these horrendous hunks of metal that just so happen to be on wheels. I mean, come on, anyone could see no good could come of something like that. You don't see wizards carrying on a conversation with someone else while traveling by floo or while they're apparating. It'd be far too dangerous. But I guess someone forgot to tell them this. It still boggles my mind how they ever won the war.

Anyway, at least this time I wasn't back in London. I really might've considered letting him just go loose if finding him had meant me going back into that particular pit of chaos. No, the fool was living in the middle-of-nowhere English countryside. And since I couldn't simply just apparate outside his front door, I found myself hiking through a bunch of weeds uphill to the place of his current residence.

I'm going to let you in on a little secret: I fucking despise the outdoors. And it's not just because my skin burns like mad after being out in the sunlight for ten minutes, it's also because there are bugs in the great outdoors. And you know what bugs do; they bite, the buzz in your ear, they fly in your mouth when you least expect it and you're left agonizing over the fact you actually ate a bug for the rest of the day. The English countryside has those sort of terrorists-in-training bugs and it's as sunny as all get out.

So let's just say when I finally reached the front gate of the Weasel layer, I wasn't at my best. I took a second or two to take a few deep, cleansing breaths. Yeah, I know it sounds like some sort of new-age muggle mumbo-jumbo, but it really does work. I had to concentrate on the task at hand. I had a mission, and after I had completed this mission the rest of my life would be waiting for me.

o o o

I am in a dingy room where I feel as if I have spent days, even months simply lounging around in. But this room isn't from my current life, it had been from before. From the days where I used magic and flew around on a broom, from the life where I was in love with a girl named Hermione who had the most unusual curly hair.

She is here in this room with me, standing idly by a window, reading a thin book. The mere sight of her compels me to close the distance between the two of us. I slowly reach out to touch her face, catching her off guard and she jumps slightly, the book falling out of her hands and hitting the carpeted floor with a soft thud. After the initial surprise fades from her features, a wide smile takes its place. She moves closer to me, grabbing my left hand with her right. I stare down at our intertwined fingers, noticing how small hers looks in mine.

She speaks softly, "Hey, you. I thought you were going to be gone all afternoon?"

I let out a small chuckle and reply in the same hushed tone, "I got off early for good behavior."

She gives me an entirely disbelieving, yet at the same time amused look.

I shrug and continue, whispering, "Hey, it could happen."

She doesn't reply other than moving closer to me and wrapping her left arm around me.

I try to act unaffected, ignoring the familiar stab of Merlin-knows-what in my chest, and lightly tease, "But I could leave again if you don't want me here."

She tries her best to bury her head in the front of my corduroy jacket and I hear a muffled sound come out of her. She removes her hand from mine and wraps it around my waist.

She's not making what I will eventually have to tell her any easier. But I can't think about that now. Later, maybe. Tomorrow, even.

I rest my head on top of hers and wrap her up in my arms as well as I question, "Now, what was that, love?"

She moves her head to the side and whispers, "No. Stay." Her grasp around my waist tightens a bit more and then she continues, "I want you here with me."

There's that stab again. I really wish it would stop pestering me. How am I supposed to be strong when every time she says something like that it makes me feel this way? I know I have to say something soon, or I won't be able to at all. If I wait to long, my voice will give out and then she'll know that something's wrong.

I clear my throat a little, "Good, because I want to be here with you."

I hear the smile in her voice when she replies, "Well, of course you do. I'm fabulous."

This breaks the tension inside me and I'm able to go along with the banter, "Fabulously fabulous. In fact, I don't know why you wait for me at all."

She playfully scoffs and replies airily, "Oh, I wasn't waiting for you. I just got caught up in a book and forgot to plan my great escape out from under your clutches."

I smile, "That's been happening a lot lately, hasn't it?"

She moves her head away from my chest and her eyes finally meet mine, "Turns out your clutches weren't all that bad after all."

I raise my eyebrows and say, "I'm so glad you've come around to my way of thinking."

She mockingly raises her eyebrows as well and whispers, "Me too."

There's more to this scene. I know it. But I suddenly find myself awake and now the room is gone and so is she. Though, these dreams are nothing new. I've been having them every night for well over a month now. I'm waiting for the dream to come that will lead me back to her.

Sunlight is streaming in through my open window on the second floor and dancing across my bed. There seems to be something urgent in the air. I sit up and quickly retrieve a crumpled green t-shirt from the hardwood floor and pull it over my head before I move out of bed. I go to the window and glance down. Much to my surprise I see a blonde, bedraggled looking man just outside the front gate.

And I know within an instant who it is. Or at least who he claims to be.

I weigh my options quickly in my mind. A link to my past is a link to my past, despite the fact I've yet to have a dream where he makes an appearance. And no, it doesn't exactly bode well that he's shown up unexpectedly quite literally on my front doorstep, especially after how he ended our last encounter. But he knows her, my Hermione. And he also knows where she is.

And that's all that really matters, isn't it?

Then, rather unexpectedly, a brief flash of me physically attacking the blonde man (though he was younger then) resonates through my mind.

What happened next really has no explanation, or at least it didn't at the time. It was simply as if someone had flipped a switch inside my mind and thousands of things began flooding my senses. Muggles like to use the term of their "life flashing before their eyes."

It was a jumble of things I didn't, at the time, think I'd ever be able to properly sort out: throwing gnomes across a rather unkempt lawn, passing through a wall in a train station while pushing a trolley full of a few large trunks, driving a flying car through the open sky, eating some sort of pill and having to run to the bathroom while my brother laughed himself silly, running through a campsite that was aflame and seeing strangely cloaked people slowly marching through the chaos, flying across an open pitch and seeing the stands alive with red and gold, green and silver, yellow and black, blue and gray.

And even more unexpectedly the window I was still staring out of suddenly shattered into an innumerable amount of pieces.

o o o

For some reason the sudden explosion of glass didn't surprise me in the least. I mean, I hadn't been expecting it, but surprise is something only foolish people permit themselves to feel. That's something my father instilled in me for as long as I could remember.

The shards of glass raining down across the lawn in front of me let me know one thing and one thing only: I was going to need a new game plan. And fast.

A/N: Giant thanks to my reviewers!

Astrianna Glaze: Sometimes I just want to hug Mr. Malfoy, even if he is a slightly deranged borderline psychopath. I mean, honestly, who isn't some days? ;) Thanks for the compliment on the moving pictures bit, it means a lot to me! And of course you were making sense, it was all very crystal clear. And look at that! Some has already taken place with the bedroom window!

screwtheperfectlife: You shall know who the Weasley is all in good time, young grasshopper. As for your question of who she loves more... I don't really think there's any way to compare between the two. Her different relationships took place in two completely different circumstances, and somehow I think that'd change things. ...Okay, so that's crap. Yeah, she loves one of them more than the other! hehe :)