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“So, you’ve come back to Hogwarts. Our splendid Saviour. The greatest of bloody heroes. Why are you hesitating? Cowering by the door like some first-year Hufflepuff? Enter. You’ve here to gloat, aren’t you, Potter? Here to brag? Here to shove your living, breathing face into mine?”
“No… Malfo- Draco. No. I’m not here to brag. It’s been… It’s been more than ten years. McGonagall asked me to come back. Asked me to talk to you… Your behaviour around the school isn’t acceptable. Appearing in front of the first-years, with half of your skin burnt off? You’re frightening them, Draco. They’re just kids.”
“Just kids? Fuck, but it’s true what the students say. You’ve turned into a spineless Ministry drone! We were just kids, remember? Just kids who fought a war. You were just a kid when you destroyed He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Just a kid when you saved the world. Just a kid when you let me plummet to my death, consumed in the Fiendfyre-”
“And I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I wanted to save you, Draco. That’s why we flew back into the Room… But there was so much smoke. There was so much smoke, and my eyes were stinging, my throat was full of ash, and I could barely see… You hand slipped and then it was too late-”
“Don’t you dare lie! You did it on purpose. You hated me. You wanted me dead. You trapped me here, in these cold stone walls for time without end. The war hasn’t ended for me, Potter, and it never will! I don’t need your sympathy. Go back to Ginevra. Go back to your family, and leave me alone.”
“I didn’t marry Ginny, and I don’t have children... Bloody hell. You’re every bit as melodramatic a ghost as you were alive, drifting through corridors and waiting in dark corners. The war hasn’t ended for me, either! You think I don’t see your face, every day of my life? I hear the silence of your muted scream in every silent room I enter. I feel the lick of those flames in every fireplace-“
“Shut up! Go home! You killed me. Trapped me forever in this dark limbo. There are so many faces, Potter. All of them are getting older… All of them growing, laughing, kissing, fucking! Everything I never had. Everything I was never allowed. My life was naught but pure-blood formality and expectations, snuffed out before it even began-”
“Wouldn’t you rather leave? There’s a ritual. It’s old magic, dark spell work, but I’ve managed it before. You’d be freed from this reality… Finally free of Hogwarts.”
“The Libertatem Mori? I’ve heard tell of it from the other ghosts. They say that it’s as painless as falling asleep, though those insipid fools dare not take the final step.”
“Do you dare, Draco? I wanted to save you when we were boys, but I couldn’t. Give me this, please. Let me save you this time-“
“I’ll never let you save me. The boy I was, when I was alive… He loved you, more than any other on the earth... Everyday he waited for you to see his pain and his torment, but you never did! You were blind to him. Even when he stood before you, in tears, you chose instead to lacerate him. So now I’ll wait here, a hazy pretence of a boy who coveted and craved, diaphanous where once I was flesh. I’ll stay here, in the halls and corridors of your childhood, a cold imitation of a life once lived. Every day you live in this world, I’ll be here, waiting for you to die. Go away now and live. Live the life you denied me.”