Disclaimer: Harry Potter, Albus Dumbledore, Severus Snape, Minerva McGonagall, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley, Draco Malfoy, and all these other people are characters belonging to J.K. Rowling. I claim no rights to them, their surroundings, or their situations. Much to my sorrow.

--- 3 Draco: Learning You Were Wrong

At that moment, Draco Malfoy was seriously reconsidering his choice to remain at Hogwarts.

He wasn't quite sure what had happened to him, but he knew it involved blindingly bright lights and an intense burning sensation, and Harry Potter hauling him along through a hellish rock-strewn inferno. A part of his mind was under the distinct impression that Potter had just saved his life, while another part was vehemently denying that any such event had taken place--or, if it had, that it meant he owed the great wanker a damned thing. Not after more than six years of watching the vaunted Boy-Who-Lived lap up the adoration of everyone in sight, from Albus Dumbledore down to that amazing git with the camera...what was his name...oh who cared, he was a Griffyndor anyway...

"Here now, lad, sit up a bit if you can, and see if you can get this down." The soft-spoken Healer, having finished dressing the worst of his burns, unstopped a potion and offered it to him. A small insidious voice in the back of his mind, bearing a striking resemblance to his father's, whispered to him that he should refuse. No telling what the vial really contained, and even a harmless medication for pain could dull his senses, slow his reflexes...

"Oh leave off," he mumbled crossly, his throat sore and scratchy from the smoke he'd inhaled, only half aware he was speaking aloud. "I've just been shot down, roasted, and got my arse rescued by bloody Potter, of all people...go away. You're s'posed to be in jail anyway..."

"I know," the Healer rejoined smoothly, having dealt with shock before, and thus quite accustomed to being spoken to as though she were someone else entirely. "You're burned quite badly, it must be very painful. Just try to drink as much of this as you can. It will help, and then I'll let you be, all right?"

Sliding an arm behind his shoulders to prop him up, murmuring some sympathetic nonsense as he hissed in pain, she put the vial to his lips. He swallowed it down with a grimace, repressing the urge to gag--you would think they'd be able to put something in those wretched things to make them taste a bit better...

A warm, pleasant tingling sensation washed over him, and the pain all along his right side began to ease off almost at once. The Healer let him sink gently back against his pillow, drawing a blanket over him, and his head slowly began to clear as she told him quietly to call if he needed anything. Then, as good as her word, she buggered off.

Left to his own devices, he was soon staring at the ceiling, again contemplating the choice he had made.

For many of the wizards and witches caught up in this conflict, it all boiled down to two men: Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of Hogwarts; and his onetime student, Tom Riddle, otherwise known as the dread Lord Voldemort. And they certainly were the driving forces behind the larger conflict. But for Draco Malfoy, the principle figures were two other people entirely.

His father, Lucius Malfoy, a man he had always idolised. Worshipped, almost. Powerful, confident, influential, wealthy, everything Draco himself most wanted to be...he had seemed for so long an irreproachable figure. As nearly perfect as any wizard could be--discounting a nasty temper, one which was usually kept so tightly controlled that few were aware of its existence. Draco's admiration for the discipline behind that nearly flawless control was too deep for words, though he often failed to emulate it as well as he'd like.

And on the other hand, Harry Potter, the Boy-Who-Lived. Also the boy who always won at Quidditch, spoke Parseltongue, triumphed in contests he wasn't supposed to have entered, made heroes of mudbloods by association, and resisted the most devious attempts of the entire House of Slytherin to bring about his expulsion year after year. Tragic, brave, beloved hero of the wizarding world...and he behaved as though all that fame and adoration were the bane of his existence.

Draco hated Harry Potter with a depth of passion he'd never felt about anything else in his entire life. He hated Albus Dumbledore only slightly less, by virtue of the fact that the old man favored Potter, but seemed to have nothing personal against himself.

So.

"What the devil am I doing here," Draco whispered to the indifferent ceiling.

He shut his eyes, his burns still throbbing feverishly despite the medication, and tried to make sense of it. His mother, Narcissa, had not wanted him to return to Hogwarts this term. With his father still jailed as a Death Eater, she'd felt the risks were too great. While open war had not yet broken out as the new term approached, it was looking more likely by the day, and for a seventh-year supporter of Voldemort to be stuck at Hogwarts when open hostilities were declared was as good as walking into Azkaban and politely asking for a cell.

Right up until the night before the train for Hogwarts was scheduled to leave, Draco had allowed Narcissa to believe that he intended to remain at home, as a good majority of the other Slytherin students had done.

Quite surprised she had been, and exceedingly perturbed, when he had announced the next morning that he was leaving for school and had strolled out with his luggage in tow and half his trust fund in his back pocket. She hadn't thought he would figure out how to get at it. But he was nothing if not his father's son. There were always ways around the rules...

But the nagging question remained, why had he done it? He still couldn't answer that question to his own satisfaction. He'd been acting on impulse, against all common sense, something he almost never did.

By coming back here, he had for all practical purposes declared solidarity with Dumbledore's crowd. Muggle-lovers. Mudbloods. Bunch of bloody great soft sentimental prats. He'd spent so much of his life hating them that these days it came almost as naturally as breathing.

The problem was...he shifted uncomfortably in his cot, unused to self-examination, and not enjoying it much...the old insults just didn't ring true anymore. His gibes had begin to sound increasingly hollow in his own ears; and though he told himself he didn't understand why, his self kept informing him, quite impudently, that that was a lie.

The truth was that over the past five years, it had dawned on him gradually that what he was seeing simply did not square with what he had always been told. He'd put a good bit of work into finding ways to deny, rationalise or ignore that fact, and had been fairly successful at it, a task made easier by Harry Potter's obvious animosity toward him--right up until the day Potter escaped Voldemort's clutches for the umpteenth time, and Lucius Malfoy had landed ignominiously on his arse in Azkaban.

This had occasioned some serious thinking on Draco's part.

At first he'd concluded that Lucius, brilliant though he was, had simply made an error in judgement with regard to the Dark Lord. Though great, Voldemort was not all-powerful. He'd been beaten, not once, not twice, but several times--had in fact been trounced quite thoroughly. His triumph was not inevitable. To serve him was not necessarily to guarantee one's place in a shining new order.

Mind you, the man had managed to make it back from the dead, or near enough to dead as to make no difference. That was not something to be taken lightly. No, the outcome of this war was by no means certain, and Lucius' faith in his Master might yet prove justified. Or so Draco had kept telling himself.

Had he stopped right there, he might still have chosen to cast his lot with the Dark Lord, with his family. He was not without a sense of loyalty. And, as much as it might astonish Potter and his bunch to learn of it, he cared for his parents, and they for him.

Unfortunately, it hadn't stopped there. If his father was mistaken about the Dark Lord's invincibility...then what else might he have got wrong?

Mudbloods, for example? Hermione Granger came to mind every time he considered the question. She was an infuriating little know-it-all, but unquestionably a witch of exceptional talent. And not bad-looking either, now that she'd filled out a bit and got those teeth fixed. On the other hand, Neville Longbottom was a pureblood. But the man was an utter disaster with a wand. How he had made it to his seventh year without being expelled or killing himself, Draco couldn't fathom.

And Muggles? Not much to recommend them, at first glance. His father considered them amusing playthings at best, and their vulnerability to magic was nearly absolute. But they were remarkably successful, far and away outnumbering the wizard population. They produced anomalies like Granger fairly regularly. And some of the most potent wizards around were the products of wizard-Muggle matings, including Potter and (if rumors be true) Voldemort himself.

One by one, Draco's most fundamental beliefs about his world had begun to unravel. He found himself questioning everything--the value of power for its own sake, the sanctity of the old traditions--hell! He'd even caught himself wondering if perhaps the House Elves would respond better to an occasional 'please' or 'thank you' as opposed to, say, a kick in the head.

He had spent the past summer in a deepening state of confusion, withdrawing from even such few and chilly friendships as he could claim to have; wandering Malfoy Manor with a scowl of discontent, which Narcissa had half-correctly attributed to his father's imprisonment, and to Potter's continued survival.

But none of that, oddly enough, was what troubled Draco now. He'd thought not at all of such things, the morning he'd sauntered out of his ancestral home without a backward glance, his mother watching him go in openmouthed shock and outrage.

No, that morning what had driven him to pack his things and board the train to Hogwarts was an inescapable sense of foreboding he'd spent the entire night wrestling with; a sense that this was his last chance.

Later, watching the English countryside pass by outside the windows of the train, he had reflected with no small sense of dread that he was now a marked man, certain to be despised and distrusted by both factions no matter what he did. But as Hogwarts Academy had come into sight, he had found solace in an inexplicable conviction that he had made the correct choice.

He had felt more and more isolated at the school as the year progressed...not even Crabbe and Goyle were around, and for all those two had had the brain of a toad to split between them, they'd been company, allies. Not many first-years had been sorted into Slytherin this year, even. For the past few weeks, apart from Professor Snape, Draco had been almost alone in the dungeons. And as much as he liked and respected Snape, and enjoyed being his favourite student, Draco mused, the old boy just wasn't much of a conversationalist. He'd never felt more lonely in his life.

And now the school was a pile of cinders. But lying here just returned from its destruction, and his own near brush with mortality, that feeling of certainty came back to him again, more strongly than ever. And it still made not one iota of sense, damn it...

With a frustrated sigh, he turned to look around the large but somewhat crowded room. Everywhere he looked there were faces black with soot and streaked with tears, and he felt his lip curl reflexively.

What a sorry lot. They'd just destroyed the place they loved most in the world at the bidding of their beloved, slightly deluded leader...and most of them didn't even truly understand the reasons.

He shut his eyes then, smiling in bitter self-mockery, as he realised that he was about to weep himself.

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