Chapter Six: Behind Grey Eyes

The night passed with both Draco and Hermione sleeping fitfully. Hermione began having nightmares, reliving Harry's death, and the day she realized Ron was missing. She watched, inside her mind, as Harry fell before her in a blaze of bright green light, falling with a sickening thud to the ground. She sobbed softly in her sleep.

Draco's mind churned out the day after he failed to kill Dumbledore, and his battle with the Dark Lord. He remembered the pain and loss he felt when Snape put him up in front of Voldemort, making him admit he hadn't done as he was instructed. He looked away from the Dark Lord, willing himself not to cry, and saying he couldn't do it.

It was then he was told his mother had been killed, and his father had died in Azkaban, because he couldn't take it. He had fallen to his knees at that moment, and the sobs dammed in his chest had released.

A silent tear ran down both their faces as the slept, watching these horrific movies of their pasts.

Draco woke up with a groan, his head pounding. He sat up, the world spinning around about him. He rubbed his head and his hair fell in his face. He was startled to see it was black and not his platinum blonde.

It seemed the Cruciatus Curse had given him temporary amnesia. He scratched his head and glanced around.

He scratched his head and glanced around. It looked very much like a Muggle home. –What the hell am I doing here?- he thought. –What happened?-

"Where the bloody hell am I?" he mumbled.

"You're in my house, silly," came a female voice from behind him. He glanced behind him and his eyes landed on Hermione Granger.

"What the…?" he said softly. "I think I hit my head or something." He sighed and threw the blanket off him impatiently.

"No, you didn't," Hermione replied. She ran her hand through her hair. "You were hit by the Cruciatus Curse, Lucien, and maybe something else."

-Lucien?- he asked himself, giving her a quizzical look. "What the hell?" he asked again. He was completely disoriented.

"Lucien, are you all right?" she asked, concerned. Her hair hung in front of her face, her eyes sparkling with worry.

"Who the bloody hell is Lucien!" Draco snapped. "And what am I doing in your house, Granger?" Hermione looked taken aback.

"You're Lucien!" Hermione said. –Oh dear, he must have hit his head really hard or something. He doesn't remember a thing.- "you were on your way home from work, I suppose, and you were ambushed by two men, I presume, in black cloaks. One was about to kill you when I stopped him. You are Lucien Winslow, aren't you?"

"NO!" Draco said.

"Then who the bloody hell are you?" Hermione snapped back at him, looking into his eyes impatiently.

"What do you mean 'who the bloody hell am I?'" Draco said, but he got dizzy again and fell back on the sofa. The last year hit him like an oncoming train.

"You're Draco Malfoy," Hermione's voice cut through his thoughts. He looked at her with wide eyes. He cursed under his breath. He sat back up, and had regained his composure, being less and less like his old self, whereas he was being how he was when he and Hermione went to school together.

"What makes you think that?" he asked, taking a deep breath and his grey eyes locked with her honey ones. He ran both his hands through his hair, knowing precisely why she thought that.

"Because of how you are…were acting," she replied, looking at him. Her eyes were confused, her face drawn into a quizzical look. "Are you schizophrenic?"

"No, not exactly," he replied, scratching the back of his scalp nervously. He let it all slip. –How could that have happened?-

"You are Lucien Winslow, correct?" Hermione asked in a tentative voice. Draco took in a deep breath. "You're not, are you?"

"Not exactly," he replied once again. –How am I going to explain this? Can she keep it a secret? Will she use it against me? I don't know,- he thought.

"What do you mean, 'not exactly?'" Hermione asked, her voice rising.

"There…is no Lucien Winslow," Draco admitted. "I made him up so I could work for the Ministry."

"Then who are you?" Hermione pressed, leaning forward, excited and afraid at the same time.

"You already guessed who I am," Draco admitted in a soft voice. Hermione's eyes widened and her eyebrows threatened to disappear into her hair.

"Draco…?" Hermione whispered. He smiled sadly and looked away from her. He tucked his hair behind his ears, his silvery steel eyes staring at the ground.

"Yeah," he whispered.

"Where have you been?" Hermione asked, a single tear falling form her eye. He looked up at her, seeing the tear drop.

"What did it matter to you?" he asked in a soft voice. "You loathed me. For all I know, you still do."

"No, Draco, you have that wrong," Hermione said. "It was always you who hated me." Draco looked up.

"No, never," he whispered.

They looked into each other's eyes. Years of misunderstandings spanned between them, and Draco gave a sorrowful laugh.

"What stupid children we were," he mumbled. "No one knows what it's like, to be the bad man, to be the sad man, behind grey eyes; and no one knows what it's like to be hated, to be fated to telling only lies©."

(Song Lyrics ©The Who)