If Draco Malfoy was anything in the world–other than an ex Death Eater and Harry Potter's husband–he was a damn good actor and a very poor decision maker.

Draco's POV

- - - 1998 - - -

The world moved in slow motion as Draco Malfoy watched Bellatrix Lestrange trace a knife across Hermione Granger's face like a paintbrush on canvas. Granger let out a soft sob. His aunt cackled and dragged the blade lower, down Granger's arm, to her wrist. Draco averted his eyes as Bellatrix positioned her knife in the center of Granger's forearm. He didn't need to see much more.

Bellatrix was going to carve a word into her arm and he feared he already knew what the wound would say.

"Stop! Please, stop! I'll tell you–I'll tell you what you want just sstop ! " Hermione Granger wailed.

He had never heard her scream before. Never seen her cry. She'd healed him after the Secumpsemptra incident with dry eyes and held him when he was the one sobbing. She was too strong to cry, he always admired that.

But here she was nearly limp underneath his aunt on the drawing room floor screaming in a way that shattered his body from the inside out. Soul, to heart, to muscle, to bone–the ache spread like cancer. There were twelve daggers in his chest and gravity was beginning to drag them down his spine. He stood in place–motionless.

He did nothing. He acted unfazed.

The world was not kind to blood traitors, but it was worse to their co-conspirators. The hypocrisy in the Sacred 28 meant that you were worthy of redemption if you simply came to terms with your wrong-doings and eradicated any evidence of it. The pureblood line had grown so small that shaving another name off the family tree was like admitting it was a dying race.

Draco's paternal grandmother courted a mudblood in her fifth year. The portrait of her looming over the man's rotting corpse was one of his grandfather's prized possessions. Like other paintings, Medusa roamed from frame to frame in the manor and shouted demeaning things at new guests, but the mudblood's body never moved. It was motionless, speechless: dead. Imprisoned on the canvas as a trophy that pure blood reigned supreme after all.

"Please, please, stop!" Granger's cries were guttural now.

His family would make him kill her. If he moved from this spot–if he breathed any harder than he already was–if he frowned–if he reached out for her–if he ran to her and held her in his arms like he so desperately wanted to. If he showed signs of concern or screamed at Bellatrix to get the fuck off of my witch you bloody psychopath –he would seal Granger's fate. Here in this moment, as she screamed for help and choked on her tears, the only way to save Hermione Granger was pray that Bellatrix got bored before she was dead.

"Stop! Please! Stop!" Granger pleaded. There was a boulder in Draco's throat now and he hoped no one else could see. "I didn't do anything!"

"Oh shut up, you filthy bitch." Bellatrix giggled. "I'm just having fun!"

"Please––" Granger croaked. Like she was calling out to him, and only him. He felt her voice in his bones.

Draco fought tears.

If he didn't kill her, they would kill him, and then he would be dead and Granger would be alone with no one to protect her from the world Voldemort was building. He had no choice. If he didn't kill her, she would want to be dead by the end of the war.

Draco feared the end of the war, because it meant total destruction of anything good in the world, or eternal damnation for himself and his family. Anyone with the Dark Mark would be guilty of treason in a post-Voldemort world, and anyone with a speck of joy in their eye would be guilty of vainglory in a post-Potter world. One day Draco would have to make a choice between the two futures and fight for the better option. But currently neither world would end well for him.

Voldemort would torture Granger. Potter would torture Draco.

"Stop–" Granger sobbed. This was the lowest Draco had ever seen Hermione Granger and he would do anything to make it stop.

Just make it stop. Get off her! He wanted to scream. He wanted to kill Bellatrix Lestrange, wanted to slaughter her like cattle.

They'll make me kill her.

Draco didn't have the stomach for killing. He couldn't do it.

He was lucky he was never assigned the role of a Snatcher. Draco would not have been able to live with an insider's perspective on the sick and twisted crimes of Greyback and his lot. Sadistic scum like Scabior didn't care about undesirables or enemies to the heir–they rarely caught anyone of worth. Those men were playing a morbid game of capture, show and then tell. They would stop random people–often witches–on the street and scream to see their papers with every hope in the world they'd find a mudblood to take away.

The girls were bound, gagged and raped. Draco wasn't sure what they did with the boys. Then they were all imprisoned. The regime was holding muggleborns in camps now–locking them behind chained fences and subjecting them to unimaginable evil. The other Death Eaters bragged about their newest torture tactics at every meeting with the Dark Lord in hopes to please their master, but all they did was give Draco another night of vomiting and nightmares about the day they caught her.

Granger would not go to one of those places. He would rather be dead than listen to another man brag about… No. He could not die before she was safe.

Draco willed himself to look at Granger again. He prayed to a God he didn't believe in to please, please save her.

At first, he'd been relieved to see her walk through the front door of the Manor alive. Now he prayed she'd still be alive enough to leave.

No. She would survive this, and then he would save her. He would find some place for her to hide away from Death Eaters and Snatchers. If Potter really cared about his Golden Girl he would understand that Granger did not belong on the battlefield pursuing whatever mission the Order had put her up to. She was too loyal, and that would be the death of her. She always obeyed Potter, did his bidding–stayed up late to research whatever whimsical project he and Weasley had assigned her for the day. Now she was out in the world, risking her life because she didn't have the heart to say no.

Draco saw Granger's blood pool around her wrist. He shuddered.

MUDBLOOD

Harry Potter was the reason his witch was on this floor now. Harry Potter did not keep her safe. And if Draco hadn't lied about his identity, Harry Potter would be in her place.

That was the first time Draco chose Harry.

- - - 2007 - - -

Draco Malfoy had grown accustomed to the taste of coffee and gin. Late nights sprawled across fourteen case files and an age-advanced picture of Hermione Granger had taught him exactly what recipe would work best to keep him awake until the morning. Too much liquor and he'd be out cold; too much coffee and he'd be dragging his quill in circles trying to keep his own hands still.

Draco Malfoy was a lightweight at first. That was nearly ten years ago.

- - - 1999- - -

"You shouldn't drink so much." Pansy scolded him the first time she had to pour a sobering potion down the back of his throat. The lovely thing about potions was the speed with which they worked; a day full of carousing was erased in a single swig. Draco could drink for hours, until bile rose in his throat and his eyes gained a heartbeat and one potion would bring him back to reality.

"There shouldn't be so many things to drink about." Draco stated dryly and took another swig of whiskey.

Draco stayed at Pansy's apartment when he couldn't stand to stay in the Manor, which essentially equated to him moving into the witch's flat by 2000. He couldn't couldn't bear to listen to the paintings shout at him from the Manor's walls, spewing the same old bullshit about mudbloods and worthiness. He knew deep down leaving his mother alone in the home was cruel, but he couldn't face her either. They made small talk about the weather and current events, but his mother always resorted to weeping over memories of the war Draco had spent every waking hour trying to forget.

Draco often found himself drinking to the point of incoherency, followed by Pansy forcing him to sober up.

- - - 2001 - - -

"You are useless, Draco Malfoy!" Pansy had screeched–the final time she offered him any help.

"You think you're so good, Parkinson. Not drinking. You think you're so much better than me." Draco had slurred, darting behind Pansy's black couch in an attempt to run from the witch, who insisted on chasing him around her flat with a potion in hand. She wanted him to sober up, but he couldn't. Not today.

"You're just pretending the war never happened." Draco growled. "You're hiding behind this holier than thou demeanor because you say you've gotten over it. Look at your fucking wrist, Pansy. You're Marked too. You're no better than the rest of us."

"Some of us are better at sucking it up and carrying on than others!" Pansy scoffed, as if Draco was the most delusional person she'd ever met. It made him feel murderous.

"' Some of us have more to suck up ." He mocked.

"You think my trauma is less than yours, yeah? Is that what you think?" Pansy shouted. "I don't recall you having to torture second years with the Carrows because you got to play best friends with the Dark Lord in your big stupid Manor!"

Draco's vision flashed. Granger on the floor. The Manor. The marble. Screaming. Helpless. Stop.

"You think I had fun in the Manor, Pansy? You think I was buddy buddy with the bloody psychopaths that Voldemort invited into my home? That I enjoyed the screams of the people they tortured in my own cellar?" Draco said. "You think I enjoyed being ordered to kill strangers on the street? You think that was a jolly old time for me?"

"You never had the guts for killing, Draco." Pansy gritted her teeth. "Some of us had to actually take orders."

"Some of us didn't get to walk away from that guilt. Some of us still have to see it every fucking day. Some of us have to watch our father rotting inside a cell on visitation days!"

"Some of our fathers didn't deserve to rot." Pansy growled.

Draco's fist clenched around the neck of his liquor bottle. "Take that back." He roared. "Take it fucking back–"

"Get over yourself, Draco. The rest of the world has moved on." Pansy exhaled. "Find a fucking therapist like the rest of us and make yourself a useful member of society."

His blood burned in his veins like magma in Mount Vesuvius, and it was due time it spilled over. Useful member of society? Is that what she expected him to be? He seethed. The rage inside of him was growing like a cancerous mass and he no longer felt the will to contain it.

So Draco Malfoy chucked his bottle of brandy at his best friend's head.

Pansy screamed–a shrill noise full of fear and disgust. Draco felt a sharp pang of guilt the second the glass left his fingers. He stared at his own hand like it had been controlled by someone else. In the moment, he truly felt it had been.

"Get out of my house, Draco." She shouted.

"Pansy." Draco frowned trying to apologize without words.

"Get out of my fucking house."

It was September 19, 2001 when Draco realized he was completely alone.

Her birthday. His witch's birthday.

The United States had been attacked eight days before. Supremacists flew aircrafts into two impressively tall towers dangerously close to the Magical Congress headquarters in New York City. Muggles died in masses and the Minister sent aurors to aid the Americans in rescue missions to find the 'no-majs' in the rubble. Uproar rose from blood supremacists in London and New York as to why wizards had to help the muggles at all. Tragedy for non-wizards didn't matter much to the remaining members of society who despised muggle blood.

Riots were held and many ex Death Eaters formed rallies, attempting to re-establish anger in the people who likely agreed with Voldemort in the way. This sent the Ministry into a frenzy, making arrests, and pressing charges, but they were essentially helpless, searching aimlessly for nameless faces and hoping someone would mutter a blood slur or two to show they needed punishment.

That's when Draco started drinking more. Couldn't handle the reminder that the war would never be over. That the people he had to fight beside in '98 would never truly be gone. He couldn't kill them all, couldn't save the others. Draco was helpless. Always. Back then. Now. Forever.

Helpless.

And Draco wanted nothing more than to show up at Granger's flat with a cake and ask to try again–to erase the things he said on the last day of August; to tell her he didn't really stop loving her, but he had to say it for her sake; he had to leave–but he couldn't. Not until every last blood supremacist was dead. Until every last Malfoy on the family tree burnt in hell and until the Sacred 28 was a Sacred Zero.

Draco roamed the streets of London after Pansy kicked him out, wandering aimlessly from sidewalk to sidewalk, ignoring crosswalks and street signs. He heard a distant clap of thunder in the sky and realized he could not stay outside forever. Thunder reminded him of explosions and miscast curses, and he detested the smell of rain.

But he refused to return to the Manor only to hear slurs and blood purity bullshit from the paintings on Granger's birthday, or face his mom whilst drunk beyond reason. So he found himself at the only other door he knew would be open.

That was the second time Draco Malfoy chose Harry.

- - - 2007 - - -

Draco shook his head to clear his thoughts and downed another swig of his spiked coffee. Focus.

He needed to find her. He needed to save her. He prayed to himself, to someone, to anyone that she had not gone and gotten herself killed. He prayed she had eloped with some muggle man and they were living happily–that she didn't leave because of him, she left because of someone else. It would take an imbecile not to notice the short span of time between Draco's wedding and her disappearance.

Draco pictured her in that silk green dress at the wedding, clutching a glass of wine in her hands like a crutch. The way she reeked of liquor, and not the kind they served at the wedding. He was sober enough then to smell and see and hear like the average bloke–that was a rare occurrence after 2001. And what he saw and smelled was that Hermione Granger was teetering on the same ledge as he had been–the ledge between brief glimpses of sobriety and complete, utter suffocation.

And it was his fault.

He damned himself, damned the world. Damned the thoughts that led him to leaving her, damned every soul he feared could harm her. Losing Hermione Granger was the third worst thing that ever happened to Draco Malfoy. The second was torturing his mother. And the first was marrying Harry Potter.

- - - 2002 - - -

"Will you marry me, Draco Malfoy?"

Draco's world slowed down notably for the second time in his life. He took rapid glances around the room; saw Pansy squeezing her hands in front of her face to hide a blush–Theo grinning from ear to ear. But he wasn't looking for them. He was looking for her . It was this moment, nearly two hours into the Christmas celebration, that Draco realized Granger hadn't shown.

Harry Potter was on one knee in front of Draco, wearing a bright red christmas sweater and a big, goofy smile. In his hands he held a velvet box with a rather large shiny diamond ring inside. Molly Weasley gasped and giggled. Ron Weasley groaned.

It reminded Draco of the time he'd held his hand out to Harry in first year for a proper handshake while every other student gawked at them. Harry had refused, and Draco felt oddly rejected for a larger portion of his life. It was a terrible feeling to be disliked by the Boy Who Lived; it was nearly a prison sentence. The day Draco became the enemy to Harry Potter, he was the enemy of anyone who loved him. He had his fellow Slytherins in school, and that was all.

Here, in Ginny Weasley's living room on Christmas day, the Slytherins and Gryffindors were one and the same. Draco had Harry, the Weasleys, Pansy–who had finally let him back into her life after Harry gave her confidence Draco was getting better, though he truly wasn't–Theo, and Blaise too. He had everyone around him all at once. In this room was acceptance, or at least the key to it. And Draco Malfoy now teetered on the edge of keeping or losing that key forever.

He could not reject Harry Potter. Wasn't sure if he wanted to, really, but knew that now was not the time to do so. Harry had shown very few signs of interest in marriage, and Draco was, to say the least, caught completely off guard. He never dreamed of marrying Harry Potter. But if he said no to this proposal, he would lose all the good he had been given in the world. Harry Potter was a good choice.

Draco Malfoy was tired of making bad choices.

This was the third time Draco Malfoy chose Harry.

- - - 2007- - -

The artists had drawn up five renderings of an older Granger to predict any possible changes to her appearance made willingly… or… otherwise. One image was blonde, one depicted the witch with pin straight hair, another gave her a buzz cut; the most ridiculous of the bunch showed Granger with preposterously fiery red hair; and the final image was just her. Plain and simple, Hermione Granger. Just four years older.

Draco stared at the plain one often, where Granger was hidden with no disguises, just a woman trapped in time. In his soul he prayed this would be the woman who returned to Britain; unharmed–unscathed–untraumatized by the evils he couldn't protect her from wherever she'd gone. But he knew the probability of that Hermione Granger being the witch he found was a flimsy speck of hope to cling to, and realistically unlikely.

He balled up the undisguised rendering in his fist and threw it at the wall. She would pick blonde. He knew she would.

She has to be alive. He wouldn't allow himself to believe otherwise.

There were no traces of Granger in any magical records since 2003. Granger, the first witch to master alohomora in one single class period, had not used a wand or a spell in four years. She had taken a train from London to Nottingham through a magical railway, but there was no evidence of a train ticket out of the city. She likely traveled through muggle means, but interacting with muggles on cases like this was precarious, and often avoided.

There were no sightings of her in Birmingham, Manchester, or Liverpool. Newcastle and Glasgow were rarely populated by wizards, and thus were relatively out of the Ministry's jurisdiction, but no muggles had responded to the Missing Person posters the aurors had strewn across the regions. So, any and all typical leads to identifying a missing person were exhausted by 2005, and by 2006 the rest of the Ministry had lost hope. They put out an alert to other governments, but effectively, the case was considered closed by November.

The trail of evidence had gone cold. Hermione Granger was a ghost.

Draco couldn't accept it. Wouldn't. Stayed up late until the wee hours of the morning putting in work to solve the case when he had too many other things to focus on during the day. He always made time for her. But Seamus and Dean had given up. And worst of all, so had Harry Potter.

- - - 2005 - - -

"She has to be staying in continental Europe." Draco insisted. He felt like pacing. "She never had any interest in the Americas–her parents are still in Australia but she'd sworn to leave them alone until the world was safe for them. Maybe she decided to–"

"We're not here to talk about Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy." Luna Lovegood's sickeningly soothing voice pierced through his racing thoughts.

Draco blinked. Remembered where he was–an office, but not his office. Not the Ministry.

Fucking therapy.

"She means something to you, doesn't she?" Lovegood cooed.

Lovegood's voice was always soft, even in school. It made Draco want to hear her shout, just to see how easily her peaceful demeanor would shatter. He wanted to witness firsthand whether she knew how to be angry too; if she was in touch with reality enough to understand rage. She'd been captured after all–held in Malfoy Manor. Draco knew very little about her treatment during that time–hadn't cared much, really. He hoped she hadn't been tortured too thoroughly, though thinking it through now, Draco doubted she escaped unscathed. Death Eaters were rarely merciful.

Yet she still held herself like the world had yet to wrong her. Like her life was beautiful. But deep down Draco had the grim hope that Loony Lovegood experienced a single iota of trauma–that she'd had to do something haunting to survive, that she had at least one nightmare after it all ended–just to reassure himself the light side of the war had been just as bad as the dark. To reassure himself he wasn't alone. To reassure himself that he couldn't have avoided all the pain and suffering by simply defecting to the Order.

He had told himself never had a choice. The one thing he did not want to hear was that maybe he did.

Draco hated the thought of therapy–it was for hysterical women and men who were too accepting of their own emotions. You only sought medical care for illness, and therapy wasn't just treatment for an ailment; it was treatment for the mind. And Draco hated that, didn't want to be sick, especially not in the head. But he knew, somewhere in his cloak of denial, he was desperate for something, anything to help.

He really was sick. Just scared to admit it.

"It's okay, Draco Malfoy. I feel your hesitation. You are safe here." Lovegood piped.

"I–" Draco averted his eyes from the blonde. He found a particular interest in the trees outside the window and the way the leaves blew in the breeze. He noticed how Luna said 'means' in regards to Granger, and not 'meant'. Like she knew parts of his thoughts he hadn't yet disclosed.

Draco wondered if Luna Lovegood was a legilimens like his mother and Lord Voldemort. He reached inside himself to remember all his years of practicing occlumency to hide the secrets he'd rather not be punished for.

He closed his eyes and made himself eleven again, hiding in the garden and playing with a butterfly on a particularly windy day. He planted rose bushes around his thoughts and watered them until they towered high over his head, blooming with blood red petals and razor sharp thorns. He drew a maze, with one entrance and one exit and a million twists and turns. Then he found the butterfly. White wings with black dots like little peering eyes, flapping in rhythm with the wind. Focus on the butterfly. Only the butterfly. He followed the insect through the maze until he found the darkest corner of the innermost dead end, where a garden snake uncoiled at his feet.

He knelt down and fed the butterfly to the snake. The wind stilled and there was nothing left but silence.

"That's a rather unique method of occlumency, Draco Malfoy." Luna cooed. Draco sat down in his rose garden. "Turning your opponent to a helpless insect is quite a youthful tactic. It makes me wonder how long you've been hiding in that garden."

"You don't have permission to read my mind." Draco stated.

"I didn't need permission. Your thoughts are projecting. Quite loudly, really. They're screaming, Draco Malfoy. Seems as though they have been for a while."

The garden crumbled. Draco watched the walls shrink until they were waist-high–too short to hide behind. The roses died–the bushes looked more like weeds than a plant. The noise in his mind returned.

His thoughts were always loud.

He wondered if his mother had heard them too.

"In my dreams they make me kill her," He blurted and damned his vocal chords for letting him speak.

"Kill who, Draco Malfoy?" Luna asked.

Draco weighed his options. There were two answers, actually. One was safer than the other, but both were true. He feared Lovegood would already know the answer and decided there was little use in lying. "My mother." He swallowed. Lovegood cocked her head. He sighed. "And Granger."

Lovegood had a notebook in her lap. The cover was emerald green and velvet, as if she'd picked a Slytherin theme for him alone. He cycled that thought through his mind to drown out the images of his mother creeping their way out of the depths of his skull. He figured the idea was probable; Luna Lovegood seemed the type to color code and personalize something as simple as a notebook for a client. It added to the aura of oddity he associated with her–delusional positivity. Strange optimism.

He watched her open the book and lift the muggle pen she'd been holding in her hand. His eyes widened.

"Don't write that down, please." He pleaded.

"The notes are warded, Draco Malfoy. Everyone else sees doodles of Nargles if they try to read."

Draco nearly laughed. Nargles. Lovegood was always on about Nargles and how they stole her shoes, among other miscellaneous objects. The Slytherins would roar with laughter as they taunted her for it. 'Loony, did the Nargles steal your knickers yet?' and 'Watch out before the Nargles steal your tongue!"

Draco's urge to chuckle was replaced with regret. They had all been so mean. Draco had always known the world was a dark place–always thought it was just to him. But he'd come to realize the world was crueler to those who didn't grow callous and bitter out of spite.

"What are Nargles, Lovegood?"

Her face dropped slightly–lips not yet approaching a frown, but verged on a grimace. The expression was entirely atypical for the witch. "Doesn't matter much anymore." She stated. "They're all dead. Killed in the war."

This single, finally negative expression and the slight shake of Lovegood's head gave Draco the thing he craved most. It felt like recognition, like solidarity. Even the delusional and chronically sanguine, pixie loving, Nargle enthusiast Loony Lovegood was tainted by the war.

That was what he needed.

A floodgate fell open in his mind.

"I had to torture my mother to get the mark." Draco admitted. He pulled up his sleeve and showed off the ink on his wrist, something he hadn't done in years. It was always covered, sometimes by a concealment charm, because the people in his life didn't need a reminder that he had once fought for their destruction. But most of all, every time he looked at the soulless black snake, it reminded him of who he was forced to become.

It made him question whether he'd really been forced at all.

Lovegood nodded. Draco inspected her eyes for a hint of disgust, but found none. So he continued.

"She didn't want me to be initiated. When I was ordered to kill Dumbledore, she screamed at my father for being a coward, for refusing to stand up for me. She made too big of a show of begging people to take the task instead–wanted Blaise to do it, at first, then eventually begged Snape. Voldemort found out about it."

Draco allowed himself to take a breath.

"So she was marked for treason for attempting to undermine the Dark Lord. A traitor. And then a target. When initiation took place–for me, Pansy, Blaise and Theo–we all had to take turns casting the cruciatus curse, or we would be killed. You don't defy the Dark Lord unless you have a death wish." Draco felt tears come to the surface of his vision. "I wish I'd had a fucking death wish."

Luna sighed airily and nodded. It was comforting almost. "You have survivor's guilt, Draco Malfoy. You wish you had died."

"Yeah, because I had a choice, Lovegood. I had the choice to say no."

"If you had rejected the order, would the others have still proceeded with the initiation?" Lovegood interjected.

Draco faltered. He thought it over. Realized: "Probably."

"So, if you had said no: you would be dead, and your mother still would have been tortured." Lovegood replied.

"Well–" Draco stumbled over the various denial-coded responses he could offer in return for Lovegood's delusional statement. He shouldn't have come. This was ridiculous.

"Sometimes you have choices, but none of them are very fun." Lovegood interjected. "The world is not always black and white, Draco Malfoy."

"But there's still a definitive line between a good and bad choice." Draco countered.

"The virtue of a choice usually becomes apparent only after you've made the choice." Lovegood cooed.

"My mother has tremors now–when I can bear to stay in the Manor, she screams at night. I did that! It was my wand, my curse–I had to do that. They made me do that, and I fucking did it. The world may forgive me, she may forgive me, but I can't. I won't."

"But she is alive, is she not?" Lovegood countered. It was strange to hear her argue. She'd never done that before. "If you had died, that could have changed."

Draco was silent. Couldn't do much more. Didn't know what to say.

"You do not owe the world altruism, Draco Malfoy." Lovegood stated as if it was a fact he should've known his entire life.

This was all too much for Draco. His hands shook and he thoroughly needed a drink, though he'd promised his husband he would slow down on liquor and start going to therapy. But this therapy was ridiculous.

Luna Lovegood didn't understand the pain, the guilt–she couldn't. She wasn't there when it all happened. She was just the same-old optimistic lunatic–she couldn't understand. He was forced to torture his mother–he would be forced to kill Granger–he was forced to be a bystander–he was forced to be cruel. He didn't, still doesn't, have a fucking choice. And yet all of his actions led to death and pain and destruction. Why couldn't anyone understand? The complexity of knowing you are helpless to do anything but follow orders but being cognisant of every decision to obey. He could have died; should have died, and that would've saved people. He wished he'd died.

But he couldn't. He didn't. And that was pathetic.

Why did he come to this stupid therapy? He was forced here too. Pansy picked the therapist, Harry pushed Draco to go. They made the choices. Why did they insist he come to this stupid appointment? Why were they all trying to absolve him of guilt? Why couldn't the rest of the people in the world get a clue and realize the world was a cruel place and he was just a realist, not a drunk.

Draco pushed himself out of the couch and took three strides to the door.

"Oh, and Draco?" Lovegood called.

Draco stopped but didn't turn to face the witch.

"Hermione Granger is perfectly capable of saving herself." She tittered. "And you are not the one she needs saving from."

Draco rushed out of Lovegood's office as if it had been enveloped in flames. In a way, he wished it would have.

- - - 2007- - -

"Draco, you have to give this up, for the love of Merlin!" Draco felt a hand swat the back of his head.

He occasionally fell asleep hunched over the cold case files–as he had done this past night–waking only to the first auror entering the office. It was usually a very angry Harry Potter, raging over the fact that Draco hadn't come home again. They'd fight and shout as loud as company allowed–softer on days other aurors came early, and roaring on days the place was empty. It always ended the same:

"How can you just give up?" Draco would scream.

"You think I want to just forget my best friend is poof, gone, disappeared off the face of the Earth?" Harry's face would grow red. "You're mad if you believe I have given up."

"Well it certainly looks like it, you and everyone else on the–Fucking! Planet! Earth!"

Harry would clench his fists in exasperation and look ready to go toe to toe with a werewolf. "The case has gone cold!"

"Then look for new evidence!" Draco would slam his hand on the table and hope the noise startled his husband.

"You're infuriating." Harry would scratch his scar. "You are obsessed with this case, and your pestilent savior complex is growing old, Draco. You're not going to rush in and save the day and complete your fucking twelve labours and save the world. You are a terrible Heracles."

"And you're a lousy excuse for an auror." Draco would say, or he'd find a similarly jabbing insult, which he knew would sting Harry's incessant God complex.

"Take that back, Draco Malfoy." Harry would growl.

"Then help me save her. Stop giving up!" Draco would grow desperate to win, to finally get Harry back on the case, to get the wizarding world back in the swing of searching for Hermione Granger.

"I don't have a choice , Draco! We don't have a choice but to move on!"

"You always have a choice!" Draco would slip up, and walk himself into a grave.

"So did you, and we all saw how that turned out." Harry would snap and point to his forearm, and Draco would return to his little rose maze. He'd make himself small–curled up in the corner of his favorite dead end–and stroke the head of the garden snake that lived there, though he felt ashamed he had no butterflies to feed it. He'd water the bushes a little more, build them a little higher with a few more thorns, and he'd sit until the world went silent.

Usually if he sat quietly long enough Harry would go up and hug him and kiss the top of his head and everything would be okay again. On the surface, of course. The pair would be all smiles and banter by the time the office was full.

Harry Potter was as good of a man as Draco Malfoy deserved. Harry's temper could burn buildings to the ground–and he'd do it gladly to make sure no doors hit him on his way out of the conversation. He never lost an argument, and if he felt that he had, he would make a dramatic exit and stay at a friend's house until Draco begged him to come back. Ginny Weasley was close to warding her front door to completely prohibit Harry from entering her home without a week's prior notice, but she was too kind to truly do that.

Draco could name at least seven times Harry put his fist through a wall and hung a portrait to cover the hole. Whenever Draco punched inanimate objects out of rage, he at least had the decency to cast a repairing spell.

Harry blamed him for the drawing room incident with Granger and articulated this fact often at the end of arguments because he knew it would silence his husband. Harry wasn't there when Bellatrix carved MUDBLOOD into Granger's forearm; he only heard the screams from the cellar. He did not find out that Draco was in the room during the torture until the second year of Granger's disappearance, when Draco had a nightmare and made the mistake of screaming No, don't hurt her! Get the fuck off of her! in his sleep. Harry had the decency to confront Draco about it after he held him tight and waited for the tremors to stop.

After the arguments, and the fighting and the fists in walls, Draco Malfoy still chose Harry at the end of the day. Draco was happy and free and giddy around their friends, and built rose garden towers when they were alone. The papers saw what the papers needed, and he would carry on like the perfect merry, happy, wedded husband. He'd hide his liquor stash and make sure his breath never smelled like gin, and he would act like the world was perfect. He would act, act, act.

Every day he swore to himself that he'd change it–he'd stop choosing the Boy Who Lived–the boy who brought him pain. Stop acting, make better choices. Told himself this is the day I stop choosing Harry. But there were few people in the world who knew how to calm his cries, and even fewer who were willing to do so. Draco doubted many other people in the world would sign up to listen to him scream at night, or talk him through the flashbacks of all the terrors he'd witnessed. Granger had done it with a smile on her face. But Granger was gone now–he'd given her up. He'd thrown her away. And Harry was the only other choice he had.

But Draco Malfoy was tired of making choices.