Chapter Forty-Six: Draco Defeated
Wish I was too dead to care
If indeed I cared at all
Never had a voice to protest
So you fed me shit to digest
I wish I had a reason;
my flaws are open season
For this, I gave up trying
One good turn deserves my dying
You don't need to bother;
I don't need to be
I'll keep slipping farther
But once I hold on,
I won't let go 'til it bleeds
-Bother, by Stone Sour

The first coherent thought Draco remembered having after the Azkaban guards slammed the bars to his cell closed was that the prison was much colder than he remembered. He shivered slightly standing there in his new prisoner attire, feeling naked to the world and the grey material scratchy on his bare skin. It was hard to say, but it appeared they gave him his old cell. At least they didn't throw him into the same one his father offed himself in. He spent four months in this damp space last time, but it felt so different now. Colder, yes, but back then Draco had a powerful hatred of every living thing to keep his blood boiling. This time, the emptiness that filled his soul felt like it would swallow him from the inside. Hermione had turned that anger into something he didn't realize was missing until he stood in that same spot once more wishing, not for the first time in his young life, that he were dead. It appeared his life had come full circle, the sins he committed in the past were bound to catch up with him eventually, right? He was granted a reprieve to make things right with many of those he hurt, and he was grateful for that. He could live off that for a little while, at least.

He didn't remember much about the trip from Hogwarts to Azkaban. Once safely out of sight from McGonagall, the upstart Auror placed the gold cuffs on his hands once more and they took him by side along to the Apparation point outside the stone walls on Azkaban Island. Draco took some pleasure in that, it didn't matter who you were or what you did, Minerva McGonagall was still going to be a force you didn't reckon with.

As the group of four (Kingsley Draco knew but the other two he only recognized from the parade of trial proceedings) made their way up a dirt path none of them would make eye contact with their prisoner. Not that Draco really expected it, but there was a look of grim satisfaction to the way Kingsley kept his eyes focused only on their destination that made Draco wonder if Hermione Granger's words were still ringing in his ears.

"Hermione." Draco whispered it in the quiet cell to himself just to make sure he could. She tried so hard for him, even when she didn't know him, even when she didn't have to. When he thought back to the day she testified on his behalf, not even a year ago, he was filled with this desperate desire to protect her from everything he had ever seen. When he went back to Hogwarts he was still so furious at the world, but that one evening when she seemed so hell-bent on sending a letter off in the middle of the night he didn't know what had come over him. He knew down to his marrow she had seen things, been through things, paid witness to horrors no one their age should face, and still she was there, fearless at the thought of being attacked in their school. It was reckless to him. It was stupid and unnecessary. He was furious at her all over again for being that ridiculous Gryffindor he couldn't stand, and yet. When he made the astonishing move to join her that night how was he to know what it would lead to? That first incident on the staircase practically danced around in his dreams since that night. Granger had seemed so sure of herself then but at the same time completely vulnerable. Was that fate? Was it something so beyond his control? Was it the first step to lead him back to were he belonged, locked up and not a danger to anyone, anymore?

Merlin, how the months had changed him. She did that, in her way. She made him finally understand all the lies he had been fed since he was a child. Even when he was eleven years old and getting fitted for his first Hogwarts robes he told that dark-haired stranger in the cloak shop that he didn't care for the headmaster of their school, the one he would eventually threaten with death, that the headmaster let in the other sort. The other sort like Hermione. All the lies and all the half-truths came out in the last couple years and he still couldn't believe he managed to wade through them all.

Draco looked back at how far he had come. Draco looked back at how far he had fallen.

Of course he had been foolish to think things would continue on as great as it had been. He didn't deserve the happiness that was waiting for him outside of this prison. He was lucky to have had a taste at all.

Draco realized at some point in the last four months that every decision he made in his life had been the wrong one, for the wrong reasons. His coward father had seemed so strong and intimidating to him and yet he let a half-blood, someone he would have otherwise considered inferior, infiltrate his mind and his home, his family.

Draco then started when he thought about his mother. She had been so happy just hours before, surrounded by long lost family she never dared make contact with when her husband was alive. Would the ministry wait until morning? Until after the holiday to tell her? Would they themselves cower and wait until she came to them, wondering what happened to her son? Draco couldn't remember the last time he saw his mother so at peace with the world. It was a knife to his heart to realize he was going to be the cause of her pain once again.

Draco tried to ask Kingsley when the Aurors delivered him to the Azkaban guards if he would be able to write his mother, but the Minister told him that he would be in contact with Mrs. Malfoy. He didn't say when, but Draco assumed it would be via Owl. Maybe Narcissa knew at this very moment how badly Draco had messed up, once again.

Hermione.

Draco finally moved from standing at the doorway from his cell to settle on the cot, he sat near the foot and rested his elbows on his knees to cradle his head in his hands. His mind just kept running circles, lapping around the look on Hermione's face when he turned to let them take him away. He thought that maybe if he could just keep focusing on her he could keep the sleep at bay. He was emotionally, physically, and spiritually exhausted and he knew from repeated experiences that no amount of sleep would fix it.

He hoped she stayed safe. He hoped she was mended by now in the Hospital Wing. He hoped that she knew he had tried, really tried for her. He had tried to make up for a lifetime of hatred in his heart to be worthy of her, worthy of her love. He didn't doubt she knew. He saw the fire in her eyes time and time again when they battled it out. Whatever the Maliceptor was made of, it won. If it couldn't stand to see the two of that happy and together and whole, it won in spades.

Draco looked around his windowless room. He could feel the very walls sapping him of any happiness he had stored up in the past months. The Dementors were long gone, but there was the remains of their long standing magic that filled the place with a lethargic depression that seemed to creep into his bones more and more with every passing minute. He tried to remember the first time he felt some of that anger wash away to be replaced with something that made him feel alive for the first time in years.

Once of those first evenings in their dorm, he remembered coming into the common room and still not quite comprehending what Hermione Granger was doing sitting there in front of the fire like she had always been a house mate of his. It confused and angered him then, and of course he lashed out, Draco always lashed out. He called her that foul name that practically made his stomach turn now to think of it and she surprised the hell out of him when she didn't even put up a fight. He goaded her out of spite, and then she turned the tables on him so completely he had been left speechless that night. He stood outside her doorway forever, trying to think of the right thing to say to get the last word, but the truth, if he was being straight with himself now, was that he had meant to apologize. Of course, as soon as she acted like she was warranted an apology that went out the window.

And then he tried to convince her and himself that he still hated her, like that was even feasible.

He stayed up half the night when they got home from their adventure thinking about what he said and if he really even meant it anymore. It wasn't like he needed his father's approval any longer, he didn't even have to see Lucius again if he didn't want to. He didn't want to.

It wasn't until he finally said something that pushed even laid-back Blaise to his breaking point the following night that Draco realized he was still acting like Hermione owed him something, like he really was better than her. She didn't owe him a thing while he owed her his life.

She told him they were broken. They were. If life was truly for the living then they were completely and irrecoverably broken. That didn't stop him from loving her, though. He loved her then. Not all at once, but a little at a time. Every night he stayed with her he might have well been drowning. Granted, if that were drowning he was happy to die.

He didn't understand why Hermione's parents sent her that letter. To Draco, they were steryotypically stupid Muggles. He didn't know how, but they managed to create and raise an extraordainary witch. To Draco, Hermione was a bonafide hero. Not just someone you read about in the newspaper or hear about in the street, but someone that every single person, on every single street corner, understands that this person is special, this person is worth laying your life down for because this person will make the world a better place. This person is the person people fight for.

Harry Potter might have been the Chosen One, but Hermione Granger was the reason they all survived.

It was perhaps the very first kind act Draco ever committed that wasn't completely calculated, going to McGonagall that day and telling the Headmistress he wanted to pay for Hermione's Hogwarts tuition.

"Mr. Malfoy, I'm not sure what you're trying to achieve here," Professor McGonagall had her lips pressed together as she took in the agitated boy sitting across from her. "Of course Ms Granger would never be thrown out. Never in the history of Hogwarts have we turned away a student with the ability simply because they couldn't pay."

"She won't want to stay on if she thinks she's taking a spot away from someone else," Draco argued. "Something about her time is supposed to be done and over with anyway. She's embarrassed," Draco paused. "And hurt." He added as an afterthought.

"Ms Granger shared this information with you about her parents?" McGonagall asked carefully. "Just like that?"

"Well I left all my Veritaserum back at the Manor, you see," Draco snapped. "So I had to find out the old fashioned way why she looked like someone stuck a knife in her heart at the breakfast table while she read her morning letters."

A flicker of something unrecognizable flashed across McGonagall's face at that moment and Draco was sure he crossed the line.

"Biscuit, Mr. Malfoy?" McGonagall pulled a tin out and offered it to him.

"I, err," Draco was so taken aback he took an offered biscuit and held it in his hands, unsure of what to do with it.

"You believe Ms Granger would rather leave Hogwarts than believe she was accepting tuition money from the regular avenues?" McGonagall asked to clarify.

"Yes," Draco confirmed, not sure why he had to spell it out for her. "That's why I want to set up a new scholarship, that way she can't say someone else is better qualified."

"You do realize she will be able to connect the dots, Mr. Malfoy?" McGonagall's lips pursed even tighter and Draco was sure she was smirking at him.

"I don't anticipate anyone actually telling her where the money came from," Draco told her sharply. "Just say it was a fund set up by the Ministry, my own estate paid very well for my father's transgressions, consider this my contribution. I'll even make it official with the lawyers, whatever you need."

"I'm sure that won't be necessary," McGonagall told him. "It is your money to do with whatever you like, if you want to help a fellow classmate I would never stand in the way. I am curious, however, why you are so adamant she should not know the tuition scholarship should originate with you?"

"You didn't see her face," Draco said with more honesty than he thought he had in him. "It was like someone she loved had died. Maybe that's how it felt. I owe her."

And so Draco told the Headmistress everything. He told her about watching Hermione, how he saw the way she fled the Great Hall that morning, her confession about her parents, and finally how he confessed himself to having been tasked with killing them. Minerva McGonagall was a rapt listener and let Draco speak without interruption. When he hesitated ever so slightly before he got to the part where Hermione had hugged him, she took the signal and nodded to herself as she scribbled a few things on a piece of parchment. Draco walked out of her office that day a few Galleons poorer with a spirit that hadn't felt so light in all his adult life.

Draco loved Hermione then, and then she went out with Potter and Weasley and that turned to shit. He thought she took Weasley back that day, but then back at the dorms it was another story. She didn't. Obvious to him now, but Draco wasn't much for obvious. He wanted to collide with the bull. He wanted to attack whatever was in front of him. He didn't anticipate her.

She got him to talk about something he managed to bury so deep into his own heart that his emotions over his lost friend were tainted with anger and resentment. That resentment multiplied a hundred-fold when she told him exactly what he was feeling and why he was feeling it. And then just as quickly as the rage came it was gone. Draco found himself telling Hermione about his mother, and that rage and resentment was a foreign entity, something to be left behind in the Draco that thought the magical world would be better without people like Hermione Granger in it.

Hermione would finally be able to finish the lost year of schooling she wanted so badly. She would be free of him and free of the constant reminder of what she went through in the year leading up to the fall of Voldemort. Certainly that was a gift Draco could be proud to leave her, and maybe he would see her once again at his hearing. He didn't doubt that the case against him was rock solid, but just seeing her again in the courtroom would be enough. Had it been anyone but him Draco knew the allegations were flimsy at best. Deep down, maybe he always knew the Ministry would get him in the end. He had been given a second chance by the law, and he fucked it up like all the other chances he'd been handed in the past. Year after year, fight after fight, he could have trusted Snape, he should have trusted Dumbledore. Draco should have found his way a long time ago and now it was too little much too late.

He wondered when the hearing would be. The Aurors were not very forthcoming with any information, perhaps they were too giddy with satisfaction that they got themselves another Malfoy, since the patriarch of Draco's family decided to bow out before they could collect all the justice he owed to the Ministry.

Lucius killed himself. Draco, for the first time since hearing the news actually understood his father. Lucius Malfoy didn't want to exist any longer. His life was over. Lucius was still of sound mind and body, and even thought he was facing prison for the rest of his life he still had a wife and son he should have stayed for. He still had promises he was supposed to keep.

It was then Draco decided he wouldn't take the same route his father did. He followed his father his entire life, right into Voldemort's lap at the end. Hermione pulled him back. He wouldn't insult, wouldn't belittle Hermione's influence by making her attend his own funeral because he couldn't handle the ramifications of his actions.

He would hold on to the life he imagined with her. His sanity depended on it.

(A/N) Whew. Well I'm not going to lie, I like writing angst. This is one of my favorite songs and I didn't plan on writing this chapter, but I heard it last week for the first time in forever and it was a perfect way to show Draco's side of the story so far. The chapter title comes from a piece of art I stumbled upon 13ish years ago, you can view it here: (quick edit, original publish didn't have the right url, ff is weird. Please google Deviant Art Draco Defeated. I tried to link up to the right picture but it's not letting me. I'll have it linked up on my Tumblr under Draco Defeated and if anyone can give me any hints about how to link here please share ) Next up we see the kicking of ass I promised. Let me know what you think! Find me on Tumblr as arielxwriter =)