Chapter Text
Harry Potter had survived a war, but the war had not left him.
It had been almost three years since Voldemort fell. Two years since Hogwarts had been rebuilt, since funerals had faded into memories, since the wizarding world had picked itself up and moved on. And in that time, Harry had thrown himself into Auror training, pushing himself to exhaustion until he finally earned his official title. But it changed nothing. The nightmares still came, just as sharp, just as relentless.
He still woke up screaming in a cramped London flat he rented, drenched in sweat, his pulse pounding like a war drum. The sheets were tangled around his legs, his wand clenched in a shaking fist, and for a long, terrible moment, he didn’t know where he was.
Grimmauld Place was out of the question. The house was suffocating in the dark, filled with ghosts he couldn’t see but could feel in every corner. Kreacher had begged him to return, to let him make the place warm again, but Harry couldn’t do it. The walls whispered too loudly, the shadows stretched too long.
So, he stopped sleeping.
He threw himself into work instead, took every shift he could, especially the midnight patrols. He liked those best—the cold air, the empty streets, the silence before dawn. It was easier, out there in the dark. He could pretend, for a little while, that he was chasing something instead of running from himself.
His colleagues—Ron, mostly—told him he was overdoing it. "Take a break, mate. One night off won’t kill you."
But Harry couldn’t.
But it was never enough. No matter how many criminals he caught, how many fires he put out, the past still clung to him like a suffocated blanket.
And so, he drank.
Harry had never been much of a drinker before, but lately, the burn of firewhisky was the only thing that kept his hands from shaking. The only thing that silenced the ghosts that whispered in his ears. He told himself it wasn’t that bad—just enough to take the edge off, just enough to sleep through the night. The firewhiskey burned, but it was better than the screaming in his head. It dulled the edges of memories he couldn’t escape—Ron’s pale face after Fred’s death, Hermione’s shaking hands when she thought Harry had died, Draco Malfoy’s hollow eyes when she lowered her wand in the Room of Requirement.
Malfoy.
He hadn’t thought about her in months, hadn’t seen her since she had stood stiffly in the Ministry hearing, dressed in black, her mother at her side, facing a Wizengamot. She had vanished after that. Rumors said she had fled the country after Lucius Malfoy died in Azkaban, or that she had been disowned, or that she was living in Diagon Alley under a different name. Harry hadn’t cared enough to find out.
And no matter how much he drank, how much he worked, how fast he ran—he couldn’t outrun himself.
Not forever.
People still remembered when the news of Narcissa Malfoy’s death spread like wildfire—whispers slipping through the streets, past shop windows, curling through the corridors of the Ministry. An illness, they said, though some murmured that grief had taken her just a year after Lucius met his own end in Azkaban. His death had been quieter, shrouded in mystery. Some called it murder. Others said justice. Few cared enough to ask.
But the whispers didn’t stop there. They turned to the daughter left behind—the last Malfoy. A relic of a ruined name. A shadow of a family long fallen.
The Ministry had taken everything.
Every vault, every heirloom, every last remnant of the Malfoy fortune was stripped away in the name of reparations. The grand halls of Malfoy Manor, once a symbol of wealth and power, now stood empty—claimed, cataloged, and sold off piece by piece to the highest bidder. Not a single galleon remained. Not a single relic of her past was left untouched.
They had taken her parents. They had taken her name. And now, they had taken even the walls that once held her childhood.
Some said she deserved it. That it was justice, long overdue. That the sins of her father and the blood on her family’s name could never be washed clean.
Others whispered that she was just a child. That she had no choice. That she, too, had been a victim of the war in ways no one cared to see.
But sympathy was fleeting, and cruelty was far louder.
She sank deep into grief, a lost bird in a world that no longer had a place for her. Forbidden from casting anything beyond the most basic charms, she was little more than a ghost of the witch she had once been.
Knockturn Alley became her cage, a cramped, rotting flat her only refuge. She toiled away in the dim, choking air of an apothecary, sorting ingredients with raw, ink-stained fingers, brewing potions she was no longer allowed to use. The pay was meager, the treatment worse—dismissive words, sharp glares, the occasional shove and slap when she wasn’t quick enough.
Draco couldn’t sleep.
The nightmares always found her—shadows slithering through her mind, a cruel voice whispering in the dark. She had spent too long living under the same roof as the Dark Lord, too long flinching at every footstep, too long waiting for the inevitable punishment. Even now, in the silence of her cramped hole which she called a flat, she still braced for it.
She missed home. The real one. Not the cold, hollow shell Malfoy Manor had become in those final years, but the home of her childhood—the marble halls bathed in morning light, the scent of her mother’s perfume lingering in the air, the warmth of her father’s voice when he still spoke to her gently.
She missed them. But they were gone. And she was all that was left.
She wandered the streets at night like a ghost, silent and unseen.
A thick scarf wrapped around her head, hiding the platinum hair that once commanded attention, now only a mark of disgrace. She kept her head down, her steps light, moving through Knockturn Alley’s damp cobblestones as if she could disappear into the dirty mist curling around the gutters.
But no matter how tightly she wrapped herself up, she couldn’t shut out the thoughts. They clawed at her, relentless. The past. The future—if there even was one.
The ghosts followed. In every reflection, she caught the hollow-eyed girl she barely recognized. In every shadow, she saw the manor that was no longer hers. In every breath of wind, she heard her mother’s voice, fading like smoke.
She was exhausted. Bone-deep, soul-weary. Sleep never found her, only nightmares, so she walked instead. Walked until her legs ached, until her lungs stung with the cold night air, until she was too tired to think at all.
No matter how far she walked, she could never escape herself.