Life had once been so simple for Draco Malfoy. The world functioned as a pyramid. At the top were, of course, purebloods such as his family. Scions of Most Ancient and Noble Houses, sworn to preserve magic from mudbloods who sought to destroy society. Then there were the half-bloods and then the blood traitors and then the Muggleborns and then creatures such as vampires and werewolves and finally the disgusting and filthy abominations known as Muggles. Draco liked that way of looking at the world, especially since it put the Malfoy family – in the absence of the Dark Lord, naturally – at the top of the pyramid, the best of the best.

These days, life wasn't nearly as simple as it used to be. It had started last year. Draco had made the in retrospect phenomenally dumb move to taunt a hippogriff and almost gotten maimed by it. But something rather remarkable had happened instead. Harry Potter had taken the blow instead. Draco just remembered just gaping at the sight before him, the Boy Who Lived bleeding from a slashed chest. Sure, everyone had said what a hero he was, how he'd defended the Philosopher's Stone from Quirrell and how he'd slain the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets. But Draco had assumed these were just exaggerations or outright lies. There were no real heroes in the world.

But Draco was wrong, because Potter was a hero. A true, real hero, who had taken a blow for someone he'd had every reason to despise. Someone who'd spent the last two years trying to taunt and undermine him at every turn. Why did he do that? It just didn't make any sense! Under most circumstances, Draco would have assumed Potter was trying to obtain some sort of leverage over his hated nemesis. But the incident had happened too fast for any such calculation to occur, and anyway, this was Potter. He didn't have a subtle bone in his body.

Draco had spent an inordinate amount of time at Potter's bedside, waiting for him to wake up. It seemed only fair. It could have been him in that bed. During that time, Draco was struck by how vulnerable the so-called Savior looked. He was small and scrawny and Draco felt he could have snapped him in two like a twig if he so chose. His mental state, despite being in a magically induced sleep while the healing potions worked, was not much better. He often had nightmares about someone named Uncle Vernon and occasionally mentioned a cupboard. Somehow, Draco didn't feel that the nightmares were about cooking.

"I am extremely disappointed in you, Draco."

Draco turned around with a start as he looked at his mother standing in the center of the room, looking as regal in the middle of an infirmary as she did at a society ball. It was surreal. It wasn't terribly uncommon to see Father around Hogwarts – he was, after all, on the Board of Governors – but seeing Mother at Hogwarts was completely unprecedented. "Mother, I don't understand."

Mother arched an eyebrow. "Indeed? I have had rather thorough discussions with your teachers. They do not speak well of you."

"I have gotten Os in every subject except –"

Mother held up a hand. She had never hit him before, nor given any indication she would do so, but Draco wasn't about to test her anytime soon. She didn't have to use force or even raise her voice. Narcissa Malfoy could chill you to the bone by speaking calmly and tranquilly. "I do not speak of your academic achievements, Draco, but how you comport yourself socially."

Draco drew himself up proudly. "I have made alliances with important pureblood families!"

Mother sighed. "Perhaps I should not be so harsh on you, for I detect your father's influence. But to put it bluntly, you act like a spoiled brat all the time, Draco." Draco winced. Mother was…not entirely wrong. "Your catchphrase is 'wait until my father hears about this.' Have you no influence or power of your own? You must hide behind another?"

"I use the power I have," Draco argued. "Like you have power of your own!"

"The best power is the kind no one knows you have," Mother said, her voice softening slightly. Draco didn't understand that at all. What was the point of power if no one knew you had it? "You do not comport yourself with the dignity and authority a proper Malfoy should have. You do not demonstrate the manners pursuant to a station such as yours."

Draco sneered, an expression so common on his face he could summon it with absolutely no effort whatsoever. "You would have me consort with mudbloods and low class filth?"

Mother tilted her head. "Oh, you really have fallen for all that nonsense, haven't you? Ah, yes. No, I see now. This is not truly your fault. It is mine. I did not educate you properly. That will be rectified in time." Draco gulped. That didn't sound good at all. She gestured at the bed. "Now tell me why you sit watch over Potter."

Draco stiffened. This was going to be so bad. If Mother found out he felt pity for an enemy, and not just any enemy, but the killer of the Dark Lord himself, he was toast. Yet he'd never been particularly adept at lying to his parents anyway, and especially not his mother. Mother could always see straight through any lies he concocted. "I…owe him a life debt," he muttered. "It seemed prudent to not antagonize him further."

A life debt was not, contrary to prurient romance novels (which Draco would deny reading to his dying breath; not even Veritaserum, he felt, would be enough to get him to admit to it) something that was imposed by magic. Rather, it was simply a very important tradition in magical society. Had it been done in private, Draco could have simply denied it and maybe gotten away with it, but quite a few people, including scions of important houses, had seen it. He owed a favor to Harry now, as much as he hated the prospect.

"I see," Mother said, sounding somewhat disappointed. "Well, at least you have a modicum of sense. Why have you antagonized him in the past?"

Draco furrowed his brow in confusion. "He…killed the Dark Lord? He stopped our best chance of stamping out the Muggles before they destroyed us! The magical world could be doomed thanks to him!"

"As I recall, I instructed you to befriend him," Mother reminded him.

Draco had remembered that conversation. It was bizarre, the notion he was supposed to befriend the hero of the so-called light, but Mother had been most insistent. But Harry had spurned his literal hand of friendship, and that was the end of that. "He prefers to hang around mudbloods and blood traitors."

"Do not sulk, Draco," Mother snapped. "It is unbecoming of a Malfoy." She pulled up a chair and sat down next to Harry, studying the Boy Who Lived carefully. "The Malfoy family always attempts to pick the winning side. Regimes rise and fall, but we endure. When political circumstances shift, the Malfoys shift with them, but we remain constant. When the Dark Lord was ascendant, we served him. But now, Dumbledore's cadre is the dominant political force. Befriending Potter would have served as our in to them, but we are left with nothing now, thanks to you."

"But…but Potter spurns our traditions! He spits on our way of life!"

"Does he?" Mother said. "Or does he despise the people who were accessories in the murder of his parents? I believe the Boy Who Lived could be made to see things our way. My sources inform me there is no love lost between him and his Muggle relatives."

Draco looked at Mother with astonishment. He'd never heard her talk like this before. "Even if I was inclined to befriend Potter, there is too much bad blood between us now…he'd never believe me."

"That seems more like a you problem than a me problem," Mother said somewhat snidely. "For now, proceed slowly. Clearly all is not lost if he would take such a grievous injury for you." She stood up. "Bring honor to this family, Draco. Do not force me to remove you from it. I am still young enough to bear another child." Draco gulped. If he was disowned from the Malfoy family, it would truly be a fate worse than death for him.

He bowed his head in a gesture of humility. "I will try to establish a truce between us."

"That will do for now," Mother decided. "There is yet time to turn things around." She turned and walked out of the room without even saying goodbye.

Draco was left stewing in his own thoughts for days after that. He'd tried to avoid the only possible conclusion for ages, but eventually he realized that Mother was indeed right. He'd behaved abominably. He'd disgraced the Malfoy family, not necessarily with his actions, but with the boorishness and lack of subtlety they'd been conducted. And he called himself a Slytherin! No, truly Malfoys had a noblesse oblige to those lesser than them – which meant practically everyone. It was time to live up to that.

He was there when Harry woke up. "Harry – uh, Potter," he said, as soon as Madam Pomphrey had given Harry an examination. "I am…um…" How exactly did one apologize for so many years of bullying? "I am sorry…for treating you so harshly. My mother informed me it was not a proper way for Heir Malfoy to act, and I apologize."

Harry looked entirely skeptical. "So basically what you're saying isn't that you're sorry for acting like a berk, you're sorry your mum caught you."

Draco's face twitched. "Listen, Potter!"

"Thought so."

Draco forced himself to calm down. "Just…you can believe what you want. It doesn't matter. The apology is given. Reject or accept it as you please. I owe you a life debt for saving me from that monster. That means I owe you a favor."

Harry smirked and a chill went down Draco's spine at the sight of it. What horrible, humiliating things would Potter want him to do? Streak naked in the Great Hall? Kiss Granger? "I want you to leave me and my friends alone," Harry finally said after keeping Draco deliberately in suspense for the better part of a minute, the bastard.

Draco blinked. "Wait, that's all?"

"Do you have any idea how much you've made our lives miserable over the last couple of years?" Harry demanded. "Making fun of us constantly? Insulting our parents? Getting us in trouble?"

"You were only in trouble because you broke the rules, and I got in trouble too!" Draco argued, almost instinctively. He took a few deep breaths. This was not the time to argue. "Fine. I leave you and your friends alone. Your friends being defined as…?" If Harry was going to do something dumb like placing every student at Hogwarts under his protection, then that was not bargaining in good faith.

"Hermione, Ron, and Neville."

Draco arched an eyebrow. He would have thought Harry had more friends than that. "Agreed. I will act civil with you and your friends and the debt is settled." He held out his hand and after peering at it for a few seconds suspiciously, Harry took it.

For the rest of the year, Draco kept his word. He avoided Harry and his friends whenever possible, and when not possible, he tried to be polite, if rather aloof, towards them. Of course, the other Slytherins still picked on them, perhaps even harder to pick up the slack for Draco, but that was not Draco's problem. He had not instigated the incidents and stopping them fell outside the purview of their agreement. It was slightly shocking to learn no one in Slytherin resented him for his new cordiality towards Potter and his ilk, but the news that it was because of a life debt seemed to stop most objections.

At the end of the year, there was apparently some hullabaloo about Potter facing off against a horde of dementors, Sirius Black, and their werewolf Defense Professor (Draco had never trusted the man), but Draco dismissed it as hogwash, product of the notoriously unreliable Hogwarts rumor mill. He knew very well from personal experience how the truth could be distorted; he'd started a sizable chunk of those rumors himself, after all. Draco hadn't made any steps towards befriending Potter, but he decided he would wait until the next year, when there wasn't a murderer lurking around and Potter wouldn't nearly be as stressed.

As always, Mother picked Draco up from Platform 9 ¾ alone. It was beneath Father's dignity to do so and Draco had tried his best to ignore how bad that made him feel. A lot of things regarding Draco were beneath Father's dignity, it would seem. But unlike the last two times, Mother had not taken Draco back to Malfoy Manner by means of apparition. Instead, she practically dragged him to the Muggle entrance.

"Mother, what are you doing?" Draco demanded. "That's where the Muggles are."

"I am teaching you a lesson, Draco," Mother said serenely. Draco's mouth dropped open. Was he being disowned as Mother threatened? Was he being sent to live in the Muggle world? "Relax, my dragon. You are not in trouble. I am pleased you have taken steps to deescalate matters between you and Potter. I would have preferred you made more progress in befriending him, but it is a step in the right direction."

Draco breathed a sigh of relief. "I've been trying my best to behave in a manner befitting my station, mother."

"And your efforts are not unappreciated," Mother said with a fond smile. "No, we're going on a little trip to teach you an important lesson. Perhaps, if you try, you may even find yourself enjoying yourself." Draco completely failed to see how spending time amidst the filth of Muggles could ever be a source of enjoyment. "Remember, whatever you do, the Statute must be upheld." Draco nodded. "Good. Let us depart."

Mother led Draco through the barrier and into the Muggle part of King's Cross. It looked…normal. Parents, children, businesspeople, commuters, all sorts of individuals from all walks of life went about their business. They weren't hitting people with sticks. They weren't burning witches at the stake. They were just…living. It was surreal. Of course, they were obviously inferior…though by looking at them, Draco would be hard pressed to tell how.

Draco couldn't help but look at the items in the shops of the station with wonder. He was glad his father wasn't there; Father would have hit him with his cane just for the expression on his face. "What are those things that woman has in her ears?" Draco asked, pointing at a woman with strange, bud like objects in her ears.

"Those are earphones," Mother said, as if that was any sort of explanation. "They connect to a device known as a cassette player, which can play music that can be heard through the earphones."

"Remarkable," Draco said. "What kind of spell is that?"

"Muggles do not have magic, remember," Mother reminded him. "As such, they have had to harness the other natural forces of the earth to do some of the things we use magic for. This cassette player is powered by electricity. Think of it as miniaturized lightning."

"I don't understand," Draco admitted.

Mother gave him a gentle smile. "And that is quite acceptable, Draco. I am not asking you to understand every aspect of the Muggle world. I, frankly, do not understand many aspects of Muggle science myself. But it is important you understand that many of your preconceptions of Muggles are wrong. I will explain more later."

Mother led Draco down a moving staircase – though it was very different than the ones at Hogwarts; here the steps themselves moved – into what she referred to as an tube station. It seemed the Muggles dug tubes underground and then ran trains through them. As alien a thought as it was, Draco was starting to admire the Muggles for their ingenuity. Mother and Draco spent a very awkward twenty minutes on the Tube, during which time Mother insisted Draco be silent; the risk of breaking the Statute with careless talk was too great.

The surprises continued after they left the station. Muggles, it turned out, had access to horseless carriages which Mother said were called automobiles or cars, which could go at roughly the same pace as the trains. As they walked through the streets of London, Mother pointed out all the technological wonders around him. The magical world, of course, had superior wonders, but Draco reluctantly had to concede the Muggles hadn't done too badly for themselves.

Mother pointed at a rectangular shaped object, attached to a building, a bank by the looks of it. And that was another strange thing – the Muggles had many different types of banks, not just one. "Do you know what that is, Draco?" she said softly. Draco shook his head. "That is a closed circuit television. It's constantly recording people outside the bank. If someone tries to rob it, the footage would be sent to the police."

"But…but what if it records someone doing a spell?" Draco asked. "Can it be confounded?"

"It doesn't have a brain, so no," Mother said, looking proud of Draco for coming to that conclusion. "There are elements inside the Muggle government that work to cover up breaches of the Statute, but technology such as this makes it easier than ever to breach it. If the Statute is ever broken, then it will be through technology such as this." Draco shuddered at the very thought.

Finally, after what seemed forever but was really only around fifteen minutes, they arrived at their destination, a large building whose sign showed it to be the Imperial War Museum. Draco couldn't imagine what interesting things there were to see inside. The rocks Muggles hit each other with? Maybe they'd developed bigger rocks over the centuries.

Draco was in awe as soon as he stepped inside the museum's atrium. There were strange looking Muggle contraptions hanging from the ceiling. Mother said they were airplanes, and Muggles flew on them at speeds even faster than the train to get to far off locales. Naturally, they weren't as instantaneous as Portkeys, but one could still get across the ocean in less than a day in one of them. It was truly astonishing.

But the airplanes hanging from the ceiling of the Imperial War Museum weren't passenger planes. They were weapons of war. Muggles dropped devices that exploded from them; they could wipe out buildings, decimate a city using them. As Draco walked around the museum with Mother, he saw how Muggles used their ingenuity to turn against each other in horrid ways. They fought savagely bloody battles in trenches during World War I, and then they were dumb enough to have yet another world war not thirty years later. It was a hard thing to accept, but it could not be denied either: Muggles were even more skilled at killing than mages.

After Mother showed Draco a replica of the atomic bomb which had decimated a city in an instant at the end of World War II, Draco had had enough. He didn't understand what Mother wanted. Did she want him to like Muggles? Did she want him to hate them? It didn't make any sense. Mother's behavior was normally quite understandable, but she was being uncharacteristically opaque.

"You don't understand, Draco," Mother said with a sigh when he told her this. "I don't want you to hate or love Muggles. I want you to fear them. Muggles are savage, distasteful brutes, but they are not stupid by any stretch of the imagination. Your father's rhetoric have caused you to severely underestimate them, and that is a potentially fatal mistake. At the end of the day, if there is a war between Muggles and mages, we will lose. It may be a long, bloody, protracted war, but we will lose it."

"So what, we're just supposed to roll over, then?!" Draco demanded, momentarily forgetting about the need to be quiet. "Should we just let people like Granger run our society, turn it into a copy of these barbarians?"

"Of course not," Mother snapped. "But we have to act with subtlety."

"The Dark Lord wasn't subtle," Draco pointed out.

Draco was expecting Mother to snap at him again, but she nodded as if he'd just made a salient point. "The Dark Lord had the power necessary to not require subtlety – sheer, raw magical power. We do not possess that kind of power, and so we must use more indirect methods to get our agenda in place."

Draco arched an eyebrow, a perfect mirror of his father. "And what agenda might that be, mother?"

"At the end of the day, the biggest – and perhaps only – threat to our people is the Muggles. Muggleborns are a danger because of their ties to the Muggle world. The more ties they have, the greater the danger of the Statute being broken. In my opinion, Muggleborns such as Granger must be seized from their families at the first sign of accidental magic and placed in our society. Leaving it until eleven allows them to infect us with this." She gestured at the various instruments of war around them.

This was a lot for Draco to take in, in his opinion. "Father doesn't think this way," he pointed out.

Mother frowned. "No. Your father's viewpoints have always been more…extreme than mine. And I believe for both our sakes, it would be inadvisable for you to mention this little outing to him." Draco could definitely get behind that idea. He did not want to face Father's considerable wrath if he found out about this. "Our enemy isn't each other, Draco. It's the Muggles. I am not saying you should make nice with Muggleborns like Granger. It is a waste of time, frankly; there is too much bad blood between our factions. But I will not permit this obsession with blood purity to get out of control and ruin our society either."

Draco shrugged. This was honestly starting to get a little above his head. "Can we go home, mother?"

"Of course, sweetling," Mother said, ruffling his hair like she had when he was a child. "I suppose this was too much to place on your head so quickly."

Draco was happy to put aside this bewildering experience after that. Well, he tried, anyway. But the glimpse of the world he'd long been trained to dismiss wouldn't leave his head at all. Draco occasionally found himself sneaking out of the manor and into the Muggle world. He visited some strange building like a theater but one that played projections upon a screen. There were…moving drawings was the best term Draco could think of, of a lion whose father was killed in an act of treason by the evil Scar, causing young Simba to go into exile. It was a mesmerizing experience.

"Malfoy?!" a voice whispered behind him and Draco nearly jumped out of his skin. It was Granger, sitting in the row behind him.

He nodded as coolly as he could, which wasn't all that coolly given the fact his heart felt like it was beating a million miles an hour. "What are you doing here?"

"I…I'm just enjoying the movie," she said, sounding positively baffled. A movie. So that's what this was. How fascinating. Perhaps it was that way because the drawings kept moving. "What are you doing here?"

Draco coughed. "I'm just…" How the hell was he going to explain his actions to Granger? He didn't even understand them himself! "That's none of your business," he said haughtily.

Granger rolled her eyes. "Typical. Would it kill you to act civilly?"

"I have been!" Draco shouted. Everyone glared at him. "Let's take this conversation outside." Granger nodded him and followed him out of the room. "Look, I have been trying my best to maintain a truce with you because of the life debt I owe Potter."

"Are you trying to learn about Muggle culture?" Granger asked, sounding curious, not even remotely malicious as Draco would have thought she'd be.

Draco shrugged. "Well, they do say know your enemy…"

Granger looked at him with a pitying expression. Draco did not like it one bit. "I see. You know, you could always take Muggle studies if you –"

"We're not friends, Granger," Draco spat. Granger closed her eyes and nodded. "Don't act like you know me. Just because I've decided on a nonaggression policy towards you doesn't mean I want to have anything to do with a mud – Muggleborn."

Granger arched an eyebrow at that. "Hmm. Interesting. Well…far be it from me to ruin your afternoon. But, look, Draco…" Draco startled at the unexpected use of his first name. "We all do dumb things when we're younger. If you want a second chance…I could see us being friends."

"I don't need a second chance," Draco snarled at her and stormed out of the theater before anyone could say anything else.

That should have been it. That should have been the last encounter he'd have with Potter and his friends that summer. But then out of nowhere, Father decided to attend the Quidditch World Cup and then him and a couple of his Death Eater friends decided to wreak havoc there. Malfoy stumbled upon the Golden Trio, as they were termed, just running through the chaos and for some reason, the idea of them being hurt by Death Eaters – by his father – stung in a way it never would have a year prior.

"You need to get out of here," Draco said urgently. They all stared at him. "Do you not understand what's going on?! The Death Eaters are here. They're going to kill anyone who stands in their way. They won't give a shit who you are. You will end up as dead as Harry's parents!"

Weasley peered at him like he had started speaking in rhyme or something. "Why the hell do you care?"

"I…" Why the hell did Draco care? "I'm not a monster," he said finally.

"Thanks, Malfoy," Harry said shortly. He still looked suspicious, but that suspicion was starting to be tempered with an emotion Draco wasn't quite sure he recognized. "You take care too, then. Don't want you to get hit by a stray spell."

The next time they encountered each other were was on the Hogwarts Express. Draco had to admit, he had slipped back into his old habits a bit more with bragging about the Triwizard Tournament – and the fact he knew what it was – and taunting Weasley over his dress robes. But come on, it would look suspicious if he acted like a saint all the time and those dress robes were an affront to all mages everywhere.

He'd tried to avoid Harry whenever possible at school, but somehow, the Boy Who Lived kept on popping up. Or maybe Draco was subconsciously seeking him out. It was strange, being around Harry and actually being civil. And he felt bloody odd sometimes whenever he was around the boy. Out of breath, his cheeks flushed, his heart beating oddly – maybe he was allergic to some product Harry was trying in the vain hope of taming that windswept handsome – whoa, where the hell did that word come from?! – hair? Yes. It was probably just that. Allergies acting up. He'd gone to see Madam Pomphrey but the mediwitch had laughed at him and given him some pamphlets to look at. Since they were about puberty instead of allergies, he'd concluded she'd given him the wrong ones by mistake and promptly threw them out.

And then, finally, in a turn of events that even that fraud Trelawney could have predicted, Harry's name came out of the Goblet of Fire. Because of course it did. The Boy Who Lived had the worst luck ever, as if he'd used it all up on surviving the Killing Curse.

"He put his name in the Goblet," Krum informed them at breakfast the next morning. The Durmstrang students were sitting at the Slytherin table at Karkaroff's insistence. "I was there. He admitted it."

Draco blinked repeatedly. "He admitted it," he said flatly. "You have got to be kidding me. Is this a joke? You're having me on?"

"I was surprised myself," Krum admitted. "But that is what he says. You can ask him yourself. He arrives now." He pointed at the entrance of the Great Hall. As if propelled by some force outside of him, Draco stood up from the table and practically charged at Harry. He was going to get some answers. He'd be damned if Harry threw his life away before Draco could get any political benefits out of him!

It wasn't like he liked him.

Wasn't it?