Disclaimer: Nada is mine. That means nothing.
Authors note: One right after the other, wham. Oh and the quote that Draco uses at the end is from Milton's Paradise Lost (because I can't help myself, and I am an utter nerd sometimes).
Warnings: Draco is sleepy, and Harry is as usual, less than tactful. No warnings though, except teasers as to some upcoming plot points (only if you hunt for them). No need for the list, since there are only a few characters (2) in this chapter.
Draco was sitting on the open door of the kitchen, ignoring the cold stone steps, looking out across the lawn and its fog, fondly. He used to love skidding around in the snow on this lawn, and as the snow from the chilly front blown off Scotland caused fat, thick snowflakes to fall, he felt nostalgic.
He didn't move, not even to look as someone sat beside him, he just kept looking at the snow, falling slowly, the thick air unnaturally quiet and muffled as it always was during thick snowfall like this.
"So, you aren't evil."
Draco turned to give Potter a judgmental look before turning back to the landscape. "Eloquent, as always," he said finally, in a mild voice, eyes still on the white grey sky. Gryffindors, it was all black and white with them. Either you were a saint, and on their side, or an evil minion of the dark forces, who deserved nothing but death by hanging. They sat in silence, and eventually, Draco added, "I did come help you. You know. On my own."
Potter just nodded, though his face was furrowed. Draco was tempted to make a cutting remark about the boy not hurting himself while trying to think, but he felt drained from the recent full moon, and if Potter beat his brains in it wouldn't be good for the revolution.
Out of the corner of his eye he was satisfied to note that Potter had the sense to start to look abashed about his instinctive distrust. The shaggy haired Gryffindor looked uncomfortable, as if he was sitting with a blasted-ended skrewt, but in retrospect, Draco supposed that maybe the other boy was not to blame.
"You're a werewolf."
Draco snorted. "All these observations you're making at quite obvious, you know," was all he said, feeling detached, and frankly, a little to tired to prod and poke at Potter with his usual vigor.
"But, Gin say's you can control yourself without wolfsbane? And none of these other's seem scared of you."
Draco shrugged, shivering slightly, not wanting to have to open his mouth and respond, but when he glanced over at the Gryffindor, something about those bright eyes, trained, unblinking on him, made him sigh, and consider an answer.
"It's complicated. There's a lot of people who can control themselves, or at least be conscious when theyre wolves. It's an uproar in the were community, because Wolfsbane potion, once you've had it once, you're separating the wolf from the human, so yes, you become a tame wolf, but you can't reconcile the two, so most of the older wolves can't ever control themselves without it and never will. And it's not easy to control. I still have the urge to bite and eat anything with a pulse, and I'm a blood thirsty little bugger, but it doesn't mean I have to go overboard and maul my friends."
Potter mulled that over, while Draco rubbed his eyes tiredly. He didn't go into the animagus form, or all of the odd Trelawney-esque exercises that he'd had to go through, or about Professor Snape and some old grey haired man, and how they had also gone through and screwed around with his genetics and insides. If they ever survived this war, and if they were ever friends, maybe then, he would mention it. Potter opened his mouth, then closed it, a few times, clearly struggling against the stereotype that werewolves were always crazed psychotic serial killers. Though, he supposed that there was some sense to that, as Draco himself wasn't exactly and angel, here.
They sat in silence, snow falling, blanketing the world, chilling it down, numbing everything.
"You helped me."
"Yes. Seriously, stop stating the obvious."
"You helped Ginny."
"Not to worry, Potter, she utterly refuses to run off with me and be my gingery pirate queen."
That got the other boy to splutter and blush, and stammer out some sort of comment of brotherly outrage. Draco rolled his eyes and leaned against the door frame, idly reaching out to try to catch a snowflake. He was tired, and sore, and the familiar ache of the crutiatus curse was weighing on his body.
They sat in an odd tense silence, that Draco was too tired to break for a while, Potter fidgeting and staring at him, as Draco kept his eyes on the lazily falling snow flakes.
"They call you Dad. Because you take care of them. But you hated them. What- well, why, I guess."
Draco let the Gryffindor stew for a moment as he thought his answer through. He shrugged, and wanted to let that be his answer, but again Potter's Avada Kedavera eyes were eyeing him, unforgivingly. He sighed, trying to figure out how to phrase it simply enough not to be argued. "I didn't want to die for my fathers cause. And I wanted them all to burn, for how they burned my mother. And. In the perspective of death, childhood opinions of other children paled, and I just wanted to help keep others from falling prey to their parent's fears and opinions."
They sat in silence again, the nearly mute sounds of falling snow even and calming, and after a moment, Draco added, quietly, "Awake, arise, or forever be fallen."