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The pub was dim, hazy with smoke, and the air thick with the scent of sweat and spilled drinks. The dim lights hung low, casting flickering shadows on the walls, but Draco didn’t notice. He was far beyond caring about anything but the ache in his chest and the bitter taste of regret that clung to his tongue.
Sitting at the corner of the bar, Draco’s mind was a spiral of thoughts too painful to sort through, too heavy to lift. The world around him felt like a distant hum, muffled and meaningless. He couldn’t remember how much he’d had to drink, but it was enough to blur the edges of his reality, just enough to make the pain bearable… for a moment.
But it never lasted.
He should have been with her tonight. Hermione. She was the one who had made him feel alive again. In the months since his release from Azkaban, she had been the tether that kept him from drifting into darkness. She wasn’t just assigned to him. No. She had chosen to stay. Chosen to help. But tonight… tonight, she wasn’t here.
She wasn’t here, and the weight of it pressed down on him harder than any of the years he had spent in that forsaken prison. The walls of Azkaban, the cold steel bars, the days that bled into each other with no end in sight, they felt less suffocating than this. This feeling. The emptiness. The brutal awareness that he had let her down, let himself down.
It had all started with something so simple. A casual comment over tea. Hermione had said, with that gentle smile of hers, “I love Saint Bernards.”
And it had stuck with him. That smile. Her words. The way she said it, like it was the most innocent, pure thing in the world. A small piece of joy in the midst of all the heaviness that weighed on both of them. She had mentioned it so carelessly, never realizing how much it would affect him. He’d been curious, so he looked it up. And instead of finding stories of loyal dogs or cute images of fluffy creatures, he had found the song.
Saint Bernard by Lincoln.
And it had gutted him.
He wasn’t sure why. But something about it cut him deep, jagged, like shards of glass being shoved into his chest. He didn’t need to hear the rest of the lyrics to know what it meant. He had read the first few lines and felt the world tilt beneath him. This was his life. It was his pain, his mistakes, his inability to escape himself.
Draco threw back another drink, his hand shaking just slightly as he set the glass down with a muted clink. He wiped his mouth, his throat burning, but it didn’t drown out the ache inside.
"Hung pictures of patron saints up on my wall,
To remind me that I am a fool.
Tell me where I came from, what I will always be:
Just a spoiled little kid who went to Catholic school."
The words spilled out of him, ragged and raw. He was barely aware of the people around him, the soft murmurs of the crowd, the clink of glass. All of it felt like a faint backdrop to the storm inside him. He had been a fool. That was the only truth that had ever stuck to him. The saintly images of Malfoy Manor, once proud symbols of wealth and power, now mocked him. The family crest, the grand portraits they didn’t mean a thing.
He wasn’t a saint. He wasn’t a hero. He was just a boy who had been given everything, and yet he had ruined it all. The world had shown him mercy when it had no reason to, but nothing had erased what he had done, what he had become.
Spoiled little kid. A spoiled, rotten kid who had thrown it all away. Who had stood beside darkness and called it power. Who had betrayed everything that was good, everything that was pure. And the worst part? He couldn’t take it back.
"When I am dead, I won't join their ranks,
'Cause they are both holy and free.
And I'm in Ohio, satanic and chained up,
And until the end, that's how it'll be."
Ohio. He was no saint, no martyr. He was chained, locked in the past, in the person he used to be, and no matter how many days he spent trying to rewrite his story, the chains wouldn’t break. They never would. He could feel them on him now, heavy and cold like steel around his wrists. He was the broken one. The man who had gone too far, who had betrayed those he loved, who had chosen power over everything that mattered.
He would never be free.
His breath caught in his chest. The emptiness clawed at him, sharp, suffocating, and he hated it. He hated that the song had reminded him of just how far gone he really was.
He hadn’t just been in Azkaban, locked away physically. He was locked inside himself. Stuck with the man he’d been, the man he would always be.
He was the problem.
And then the words continued, spilling from him like a confession he wasn’t ready to make, but somehow couldn’t stop.
"I said 'Make me love myself, so that I might love you.'
Don’t make me a liar, 'cause I swear to God,
When I said it, I thought it was true."
The words ripped through him, harder than any curse, harder than the countless times he had been beaten down by his past. He had said it. He had said he would change. He had promised Hermione that he would fix himself, that he could become the man she deserved. But the truth was he was still broken. Still a liar.
How could he love her when he couldn’t even love himself?
He slammed his fist onto the bar, feeling the sting of it, but it wasn’t enough. It never was. The pain didn’t go away. The guilt didn’t fade. Hermione had given him a chance. She believed in him. And every time she smiled at him, he thought maybe, just maybe, he could find a way to be good. But the reality was too harsh.
He was drowning. Drowning in self-loathing and regret. And she didn’t even know.
"Saint Calvin told me not to worry about you.
But he's got his own things to deal with.
There's really just one thing that we have in common:
Neither of us will be missed."
The bitterness was like bile in his mouth. Calvin. A voice from his past. A distant lesson from someone who had never really understood him. Draco had spent so many years worrying about what everyone else thought of him, but now? Now he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Hermione. The one person who had seen something in him, who had reached out when he least deserved it.
But would she miss him? Would anyone? Or would he just fade into the background like everyone else he had hurt?
The truth was, he was a shadow. He always had been. And it wasn’t just about the past. It was about the person he would always be.
The final words of the song tore at him, and he found himself choking out the next line, his voice shaking. His heart was breaking with every word.
"Saint Bernard sits at the top of the driveway.
You always said how you loved dogs.
I don’t know if I count, but I’m trying my best,
When I’m howling and barking these songs."
She loved Saint Bernards. The thought twisted in his gut. It was a small thing, a silly thing, but it had stuck with him. She had trusted him with that piece of herself. And now here he was broken, drunk, howling in the dark. A man who didn’t deserve her, didn’t deserve anyone.
He didn’t know what he was anymore. But as the song played in his mind, he couldn’t help but feel the weight of it all, pressing down on him.
He wasn’t Saint Bernard. He wasn’t even close. He was just a man howling in the dark, barking a song that no one would ever hear.
As the tears pricked at the corner of his eyes, Draco didn’t bother to wipe them away. He didn’t care anymore. He was lost, and maybe, just maybe, that was how it was always meant to be.