A/N:I know, I know it took AGES coming. I have assessments next week, so this is my way of skipping revision…hehe.

Anyways, a majorly hard chapter to write. You'll see why. And yeah, I do understand that the way the plot goes is going to be very unpopular with some of you guys, but what can I say? War has its unpleasant bits…

A bad person

I'm a bad person. That's the conclusion I've come to. Over a month after the disappearance of my mother where was I? Frantically searching for her? Tracking down her supposed-murderer with vengeance in my heart? Wracked with grief, inconsolable and suicidal? No. I was walking through Muggle streets, feeling the end of the August sunshine. It was a week before Hogwarts restarted (or whatever was left of the school for whoever was left alive). A strange lethargic peace fell over me as the sunshine warmed my face and the wind stroked through my hair. I wandered aimlessly down side streets, aiming for the roads with their sleepy houses where few people walked and the cars sat quiet. Silence was a commodity rarely to be had in 12 Grimwauld Place, and I coveted it above almost all else.

I took the opportunity as I walked to think. It is one thing to flee desperately from Lord Voldemort and it is quite another to consider the consequences of your actions a month later. The world of Voldemort and Deatheaters and death and horror was a million miles away, and here I was, a palaeontologist, helping Potter to excavate the fossilised remnants of the Dark Lord's past. Just one difference: when the palaeontologists find a t-rex arm bone the dinosaur is never going to come back to claim it. What would Voldemort do when he discovered that we were smashing his precious Horcruxes? I shuddered slightly at the thought.

But the sun was warm, and I was at peace with myself. My future was certain: I had bound myself to this boy Harry Potter, for better or for worse, and I would stay with him. In truth, he was not as terrible as I remembered, but then neither was I any longer. Over the past month I had grown up fast, and I blushed when I remembered my tantrums the day I came to Grimwauld Place. I had learnt to control myself around people I believed to be inferior, something which the life of a Malfoy had never taught me. Not Potter though. For some reason I no longer perceived him as inferior. He still made me nervous: I didn't like it when his eyes darkened in a temper. It would take more than a month to make me forget that bathroom, to forget the power he had wielded and the fury in his eyes… But I was getting there. And besides, I was hardly defenceless. Through gentle testing of his mental defences I had worked out that I was at least his equal in Occlumency, and Aunt Bellatrix had once told me that he would never ever be able to perform an Unforgivable properly, like I could. She had said that he didn't have the necessary malice in him, and I was growing more inclined to believe her.

Aunt Bellatrix: I refused to believe that she had been killed when Erebos was razed to the ground. The Dark Lord valued her too much. But what of her? I didn't even know her well enough to know if she'd have stood with her sister against her Lord. Or would she have abandoned my poor defenceless mother to the Dark Lord and was even now trying to hunt me down? If that was the case I could not claim to be surprised; my Father's reaction to my defection had been a sharp lesson in what a Malfoy does and doesn't do if he wants to retain that exalted name.

Subconsciously my feet had brought me back to Grimwauld Place. I glanced around surreptitiously, checking for unwelcome eyes, then focussed my mind. The house expanded into being and I climbed the steps and murmured the spells needed to unlock the door. It swung open and I crept inside silently, desperate to avoid waking up the hideous woman in the portrait in the hallway.

And it hit me, like a wet sponge in the face.

A wave of misery and human anguish and suffering.

And all I thought was Urgh! What now? My day was going so well…

Like I said, I'm not a good person. I'm not a kind, compassionate, caring person who walks around with lemon sherbet in his pockets to give to little children when they skin their knees. I walk around with a wand and perhaps some evil amulet in my pocket. I don't do caring and I loathe sharing. Excuse me? I have problems enough of my own thank you, and since I don't foist them on you lot I'd rather you didn't insist on shovelling yours onto me.

Carefully avoiding the kitchen and any rooms likely to contain Weasleys I went in search of the one person in this house I could trust to give me a concise answer, sans weeping, wailings, tearing out of hair etc. Potter. I took the stairs to his room two at a time, knocked, opened the door, trotted in and said breezily, "So, who died?" One look at his face was enough to make the smile drop from my lips. "Oh God, who died?" He was sitting up in bed, a large amount of damp, scrumpled tissues surrounding him. I had an inkling that he had not been the only contributor to them, simply because their sheer number meant that Victoria Falls would have had to stream from his eyes to fill them all. Peering closer, I saw that he was at the 'so shocked I can not actually react' stage, and that the tissues had serviced someone else. An extremely feminine sniff, which ended in a sob, came from someone other than him.

Potter turned away from me as I came further into the room, close enough to see the Weasley girl sitting on the floor on the other side of his bed. As I watched she reached for another tissue and blew her nose with a wet sound. Potter had his hand resting on her head, and his stunned expression remained fixed. The Weasley girl ignored me as she dropped the tissue onto her lap and took up what was obviously an interrupted narrative.

"And the house was s-such a m-mess, and the sh-shop, and the d-door was, was broken down." She gave a shuddering half sob and Potter made a soothing sound. "And ab-bove in the sk-sky that h-horrible m-mark. It was so-so-so bright and big." She dissolved into more tears, then glanced up and fixed bleary eyes on me. "What is he doing here?" Potter glanced back at me, and spoke softly.

"He lives here, Ginny."

"N-no!" she shrieked through tears. "He's one of th-them H-Harry! He has the m-mark on his wrist!" Potter winced and subconsciously rubbed the sweat band on his left wrist as I stood there, frozen. Shoot, here we go again. "He's evil, and he's got the m-mark and he's bringing V-Voldemort HERE!" She screamed the word and flung out her hand, pointing accusatorily at me. I flinched slightly. Potter bit his lip.

"The mark doesn't mean anything, now Ginny," he said softly. He attempted to pull down her hand but she flung him off.

"Yes it does!! It means he's evil, it means he works for Voldemort and V-V-Voldemort killed F-fred and George!" Looking horrified with herself for saying the words, she stuffed her hand in her mouth and gave a shuddering moan. "NOOOOOO!!! I don't want it to be this way!"

Potter gave me a 'leave now' look and I obliged. I loathe emotional females, but more than that I was shaken. Was this true? Had the Dark Lord struck to the very core of the fragile family unit that called itself The Order of the Phoenix? If so I could see even greater amounts of hatred coming my way.

There, you see, I am a bad person. My first reaction was Ok, this isn't going to be good for me. My SECOND reaction was Oh dear, that's got to be upsetting, my third reaction was Shame, I suppose and my fourth reaction was Meh. See? I'm a heartless bastard, but at least I have the guts to say it. I went into my room, and stood in front of my mirror, in my t-shirt and jeans and studied myself. Malfoy. Malfoy to the core. Claimed by the Dark Lord, no, worse; self-proclaimed follower of the Dark Lord. And there on my wrist, emblazoned for the world to see, was proof. You feel shame for your mark Potter? You have an excuse; it was forced on you. I chose it willingly, blindly, proudly. And I was such a fool.

The mighty heir to the Malfoys.

Another fool. Just like the rest of them.

I stayed in my room for the rest of the day, perhaps wisely, as tensions were high (to put it mildly). People I'd never seen before dashed in and out the house, the Weasley girl remained in Potter's room and he stayed in bed. Slowly, from overheard conversations, I pieced together the whereabouts of the others. Mrs Weasley had been the one who first saw her daughter when she Flooed herself to here, and shot out of the fireplace covered in soot and tears. The woman had listened as far as 'and Fred and George are gone' before collapsing. She was in bed, blessedly unconscious. Mr Weasley was out searching for the twins, with various members of the Order of the Phoenix. Weasley R. and Granger had been confined to their rooms, and were apparently climbing the walls in frustration. Detached and Malfoy cold, I understood Mr Weasley's reasoning perfectly: he didn't want them under his feet getting into trouble in their zeal to find the twins.

And the story of what had happened filtered to me as well. The Weasley girl had gone out shopping and returned to find the shop ransacked, the door off its hinges and the Dark Mark blazing above. She had searched frantically through the shop and the rooms above to find them all in disarray, before flinging Floo powder in the fire and getting to her parents as fast as she could. So much for her bid for independence…

And the bodies were not found that day, nor that night. The Weasley girl was eventually given a sleeping draught and tucked into bed in her old room. Mrs Weasley woke up and shrieked, "Fred! George!", but when Lupin and I entered her room she had frozen rigid and would not utter a word. Daddy Weasley stayed out all night, and so could not be updated on the condition of his wife. Worry gnawed at me; almost exactly the same thing had happened to my mother. A build up of immense stress followed by a sharp shock. I would not wish her fate on any other person, even a Weasley.

I sneaked into her room the next morning to check up on her, seeing as everyone else was to busy searching for the twins. She sat propped up by the pillows, a cold mug of tea beside the bed. Her face was pale, her red hair rumpled and her eyes unfocused. Knocking, I walked in and perched on the edge of the double bed.

"Mrs Weasley?" Slowly she turned her vacant gaze on me, and her eyes attempted to focus.

"Arthur?" I stiffened. To be mistaken for porky Daddy Weasley! The shame of it…

"No," I said, as gently as my annoyance would allow. "My name is Draco." She smiled warmly.

"George! But where is Fred?" Great. Now she thought I was one of the twins. If it was my mother I would have patiently corrected her again and again, but there was no reason to go through all of that now, so instead I forced a smile.

"We're finding him. He got lost, you see." She reached out and took my hand. I fought the urge to shake her grip off.

"George…I, I had the most terrible dream. I dreamt you were both gone."

"Really?"

"Yes. But now that you're here it's all right." I lowered my voice to its most gentle and reassuring.

"Yes, it's all right. Have you slept at all last night?"

"No…I was worrying. I don't know why; you're here now."

"Mother, are you awake?" The door opened as the voice reached my ears. Guiltily I sprang up, away from the bed, and turned to face Weasley R. standing in the doorway. His face flushed red. "Malfoy. What are you doing here?"

"I came to see if she was all right," I snapped.

"How kind of you!" Weasley spat. "But no thanks. We don't need your compassion, Malfoy."

"She's in shock," I said softly. "If you don't know how to deal with it she'll just get worse."

"Why can't you get it?" Weasley asked furiously. "We don't want you or your help, Malfoy." I shrugged, refusing to allow my temper to rise.

"Your loss, Weaselby."

"DON'T CALL ME THAT!!" he screamed, drawing his wand. The tension of the previous day and last night had obviously set him on edge, and now he looked nothing short of demented, facing me with his wand pointing at my chest. I raised my hands in a peaceful gesture.

"Believe me, Weasley, the last thing you want to do is cast any spells in the same room as her." I jerked my head back at Mrs Weasley, who looked confused. Weasley paused indecisively for a minute, breathing hard, then stuffed his wand in his pocket and stormed out. I heard his footsteps thudding downstairs, and then the portrait of the hag downstairs started screeching, and over her voice the sound of the front door slamming shut reached my ears. I turned helplessly back to Mrs Weasley.

"I'm just going out, um, Mum." She glanced up in surprise at my voice, as if she'd forgotten I was there.

"Have fun, dear."

"Right. Toodles." Or whatever George usually says.

I edged out of the room, and went in search of Potter. He was sitting in bed scribbling in a notepad.

"Potter, how much longer until you actually stop faking and get out of bed?" He yawned and smiled fleetingly.

"And a good morning to you too, Draco." He frowned. "Any news?"

"None. What are you doing?"

"Making notes. I need to work out what the next Horcrux is." I pricked up my ears at the word, but furrowed my brow in confusion at the same time.

"Shouldn't you be thinking about the twins? Everyone else is." Potter shut his notebook with a snap.

"It may be a shock to you, Draco, but there are more important things for me to consider at the moment." Well, that did surprise me.

"But aren't they your friends?" I enquired. "I mean, I completely agree with you in that there are far more pressing matters to be considered, but isn't that attitude a touch out of character?" Potter breathed out heavily.

"Draco, I'm running out of emotion. Yes, they're my friends and I'm terribly sorry that they're missing, but let's face facts. They're probably dead, and even if they aren't I don't know where to find them and I can't look for them. So what use is my worrying over them?"

"Because it's what good little human beings do."

"Well bully for them."

"You're losing the capacity to care," I said quietly. He passed his hand over his eyes tiredly.

"Yes, I am. I can no longer care about anyone or anything else except this, Draco." He waved the notebook. "I'm trying, but the most important thing is to bring Voldemort down. Once he's dead then I'll have time for my friends."

"Oh." We both turned to see Granger standing in the door. I groaned inside. Was this my day for being walked in on? She shuffled uncomfortably. "I wanted to talk. But I guess you don't, Harry." Pain crossed his face.

"Hermione, I'm sorry. I didn't mean that."

"Maybe," she said softly. "But you are obviously busy." Potter looked uncomfortable. She sighed. "If you see Mr Weasley can you tell him I've gone out please?"

"Where are you going?" I asked. She shrugged, and I noticed for the first time the way her eyes glittered, as if she'd been crying.

"To get a drink." Her voice rose at the end, nearly dissolving into a sob, and she turned and clattered downstairs.

"With any luck she'll run into Weasley and they'll have a good weep together," I mused. Potter raised an eyebrow.

"You really don't care, do you, Draco?"

"No," I said softly. "I try, but I really don't. I'm a bad person, you see." I smiled to show him I was not bothered. He reached out and touched my arm, and I started at the unexpected contact.

"You and me both, Draco. You and me both."

Aww, further bonding for the boys. Again I'll stress: This is not going to turn slashy. Any references you may think there are to upcoming slash are either your imagination or just me messing with you…hehe, sorry.

Anyways, please review! I really love it when you do...