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The halls of Hogwarts rang with a strange sort of emptiness the morning after that final battle. Bright sunlight swept inside through windows and craters alike. All the bodies—regardless of their life’s allegiance—had long been removed to the Great Hall for identification and mourning. That was where all the living remained as well, except for the solitary young man that stood staring blankly at the remaining wreckage strewn before him.
Draco Malfoy knew that he did not have much time. Shock lay thick over all of Hogwarts’ inhabitants, but it would not last forever. Soon someone—perhaps Potter, perhaps not—would remember that three among their grieving number did not belong. The Dark Lord was gone; the threat to the Malfoy family was not. Draco had no delusions that he would not be taken away along with his parents to whatever crude prison might be erected without the dementors to guard Azkaban. The Dark Mark burned into his arm would make certain of that.
“[Name].”
No one answered the single word that fell from his pale lips. Nothing stirred at hearing it either. And why should they? You were dead. Draco had seen your body in that very corridor only a year ago. The darkness then made it difficult to tell for sure, and he’d been moving so quickly that he had hoped, despite Aunt Bella’s gleeful assurances to the contrary, that he had imagined it. Perhaps he had imagined what he had seen that very morning, too.
“[Name]!” he called again, now moving down the hall. “[Name], come out. It’s me.”
Even when his foot collided with a chunk of the wall that had caved in during the fight, he did not stop. Here. You had to be here, and he’d be damned if he went anywhere else before he talked to you. He would pace for hours if he had to. Harry Potter himself would not be able to stop him. Draco would not leave until he knew the truth for sure.
“[Name], please.”
If anyone were to spot him, what would they think? Draco Malfoy, the youngest Death Eater to ever be inducted, the orchestrator of Albus Dumbledore’s death, talking—no, pleading—with thin air? Malfoys did not go mad, and they did not plead. Not until that day.
“[Name], I—”
“She doesn’t want to talk to you.”
A girl’s transparent head pushed out of the thick wood door to Draco’s left. The rest of her equally transparent body soon followed.
“Myrtle,” Draco said. Why had he not thought of Myrtle? She was his friend. She was dead. She would understand. Had she not always assured him that she understood?
“Hello, Draco,” she said, with none of the previous sympathy that he had relied upon.
“Where is [Name]? Have you seen her?” he asked.
“So you’re not listening to me anymore either, I see. I told you, she doesn’t want to talk to you. Neither do I, come to think of it.”
Myrtle began to drift away in the direction Draco had come from. He watched her go, torn. True, in life Moaning Myrtle had been a muggle-born, and she had spent all her time since her death being a pathetic nuisance to all who dared enter her bathroom. He counted himself lucky that he had missed the worst of her behavior on account of not using that bathroom by default. Still, she had been his sole confidant for one of the worst years of his life. He could not just let her leave.
“Wait!” he said, and made the mistake of trying to make her do so. His hand contracted right through her arm.
She did pause, but didn’t seem to care all that she’d made him feel chill to the bone. “What do you want, Malfoy?”
“Since when do you call me Malfoy?”
“Since I found out that all your sniveling was over murder.”
“I didn’t want to do it.”
“But you still tried.” Her glasses flashed. “Did you think it would be a laugh, making me feel sorry for you? Stupid Myrtle, being kind to a murderer? Well, Malfoy, I’m not laughing, and neither is [Name].”
“I didn’t, I swear. But—”
“Goodbye,” Myrtle said.
When she took off the second time, she did so at a greater speed. Once she rounded the corner, his only chance to speak to you would vanish along with her. A year spent stuck inside his home had not prepared Draco for the kind of running necessary to keep up with someone who didn’t need to use their legs, unfortunately, and he could not keep up no matter how hard he tried.
“I’m sorry!” he shouted after her.
The shameful confession rebounded back to him a thousand times in the empty hallway. His face burned. Slowly, Myrtle drifted back toward him, her eyes narrowed with intense dislike behind the thick lenses of her glasses.
“Why should I believe you?” she asked.
“Because I loved her.”
After considering him for another eternity, she finally nodded. Then she disappeared through the closest wall once more.
Draco held his breath for one minute. Two. Perhaps she had been lying to him. Perhaps you couldn’t be convinced. Perhaps he had been mistaken. The Grey Lady was also a young, beautiful dead woman. A trick of the light during the celebration of the Dark Lord’s defeat, and here he was embarrassing himself and his family by mooning after a girl he hadn’t seen for ages. He had just made up his mind to return to the Great Hall before someone saw him in this humiliating position when a second ghost appeared to him.
“Draco,” you said, so coldly that an even worse chill than before slid up his spine.
All he could do was stare at you, like a stupid house-elf. It was as though Draco were staring at a photograph of you, so unaltered was your appearance from the one he knew—save for the transparency and lack of color, obviously. So Aunt Bella had been right. You had died the night he let the Death Eaters inside Hogwarts. He would not have been surprised if she had cast the Killing Curse herself.
“I assume you didn’t summon me just to gape,” you snapped.
Had he truly been silent for so long? “No.”
“Then why don’t you spit it out? I’ve got all the time in the world, and I still don’t want to spend another minute of it in your company.”
“Don’t be like that.”
“I have the right to ‘be like that.’ Really, Draco? All that change of heart talk was rubbish. You used me.”
“I didn’t,” he said. “I promise.”
“So you didn’t try to kill Professor Dumbledore?”
“He made me—”
“And you didn’t willingly take the Dark Mark?”
“If I refused—”
“And you didn’t let a bunch of your Death Eater pals inside the castle and get me killed?”
Guilt bubbled like overcooked potion in his chest. A year of the sensation had tortured him. When he had spied you with the other Hogwarts ghosts that morning, Draco had thought he might be able to rid himself of it for good. He could apologize. He could explain. He could be forgiven. The look on your face made it clear that none of that would happen. Swallowing, he tried to speak again:
“You don’t understand.”
“I understand that Harry was right about you all along. You’re nothing but a lowdown, blood-purity fanatic. I never should have trusted you.”
Draco’s lips curled. Potter. Of course. Even in your death, he came between you. Perfect saintly Potter, your friend, your idol, the reason Draco could never really tell you how he felt because the idea of Potter knowing would have been enough to kill him. But Draco pushed the thought away. He would consider Potter at a later date.
“I didn’t mean any of it. I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Dumbledore. Professor Snape did.”
“Do you think I care?” you demanded. “So you didn’t finish the job. You intended to.”
He could tell you were about to go the same way as Myrtle: out of his life forever. This was his last chance. Who knew where you would go while he was locked away? How would he survive with this horrible feeling in his bones?
“I didn’t intend for you to die,” he said softly.
This had the opposite effect that he had hoped for: Your glare turned harder than ever. “But anybody else—any muggle-born, any friend of Harry’s, any witch or wizard that would fight You-Know-Who that wasn’t me—they could die? I don’t want to hear it!” you said when he opened his mouth to protest further. To his shock, silvery tears gathered in your eyes. “I’m not anything special. You just wanted me to think you thought I was.”
His tongue felt too thick to move inside his mouth. It was not often that Draco found himself speechless, rarer still was when he was forced to admit that someone else was right. All of this had started less than genuinely. You were supposed to be his line to Potter and his pals. Nothing more. Just like all his other plans, that, too, had turned to ruin.
“You are special.”
Something flared in your ghostly eyes. His heart leaped, then fell as you turned away from him. “If you thought so, you’d have known I wouldn’t stand back while Hogwarts was invaded.”
“I’m sorry, all right? I’m sorry, [Name].” As undignified as crying was, hot tears spilled down his cheeks. “I never meant it. If I could take it all back, I would. You have to forgive me. I-I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I can’t do anything. I just keep thinking about what I did to you.”
“Good. I hope my death haunts you. I hope my death haunts you for the rest of your miserable, cowardly life, because I certainly am not going to do it myself!”
“But—”
“I don’t care. I don’t care what excuses you have, and I don’t forgive you. Go away, Draco, and don’t come back. If I see you in this castle again, I’ll have Peeves drop a chandelier on your head.”
Then you flew through the ceiling without giving him another opportunity to speak.
He stared at the place you had vanished, hoping against hope that you would change your mind and return to him. You did not. Draco was forced to walk back to the Great Hall with the guilt still gnawing at his core. The sensation would not ebb, no matter what he did, no matter how his parents embraced him, no matter how long the celebration went on. With the fall of the Dark Lord, he should have felt relief in knowing that his long nightmare was finally over. Instead, all he felt was dread.
You’d get your wish. Even without ever appearing to him again, you’d haunt Draco for the rest of his days.