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I'm rememberin' I promised to forget you now
The rain felt fucking incredible when he was this pissed.
Draco leaned against the brick wall of the venue, letting the downpour soak through his leather jacket, through the thin t-shirt underneath, down to skin that didn’t remember what magic felt like anymore. Three years. Three years since the Wizengamot stripped it all away, took his wand, took his name from the registries, and tossed him into Muggle London like garbage into the Thames.
He'd promised himself he'd forget. Forget the texture of a wand between his fingers. Forget the ethereal feeling of a perfectly cast charm. Forget her.
The whiskey helped though. Was one of the only things that did. Tonight he'd done six shots before the show, another three after, and he still couldn’t drown out the memory of the last time he’d seen her from his mind. It was fine. That's what the pills were for, the little blue ones his bassist, Rick always got him that made everything go soft and warm around the edges.
He wasn’t going to take the blame for this. Not for the show that went sideways, not for the bottles on the stage, not for the girl who’d broken down screaming when he didn’t recognize her as one of last week’s lays, and not for the back alley fight with a fucking ex-classmate (of all fucking things) that put him in this situation.
It was the war’s fault. His fucked up family’s fault. The Ministry's fault for taking away the one thing that assigned any value to him.
Guilt seeped through the cracks of his carefully constructed facade of defensiveness. After everything, could he really look in the mirror and say none of it was on him? The thought came unbidden, unwelcome.
He laughed into the night, harsh and gravelly, before taking another drag of his dampening cigarette. As the nicotine hit him, it heightened the effect of the drugs already coursing through his system, drowning out any perspective that thought might have evolved into.
~ ~ ~
October 2008
Six months previously
Am I half the man I used to be?
He was browsing the fiction section at Waterstones when he heard it.
Her voice.
"Excuse me, can you show me where I might find some Mary Oliver?"
The voice was just as bright and crisp and swotty as he remembered.
Draco’s entire body froze—his hand halfway to an aesthetically pleasing boxed set by an author named Stephanie Meyer. He turned on his heel so quietly that you’d think he was in the midst of a Gringotts heist. She stood there, three feet away, cardigan and jeans, hair pulled back in a messy bun, looking utterly, devastatingly normal.
"Hermione." The way he uttered her name was reverent and awe struck. Had he ever formed those syllables out loud before? Outside of his own wandering thoughts? The slip up brought a flush to his ears that he couldn’t control.
Her eyes narrowed and showed confusion before recognition slowly dawned. "Malfoy?"
His hair was loosely pushed back from his face, dark blond instead of platinum, and a length that would have likely led his mother to an early grave. The tattoos were a disguise too—covering his left forearm, crawling up his neck. Muggle clothes, Muggle life, Muggle hollowness where the core of his being used to hum with power.
"I didn't..." she started, then stopped. "You look different."
"Yeah, well. Exile will do that." He'd aimed for casual but ended up landing somewhere near bitter.
They'd talked for maybe ten minutes. It was stilted, painful conversation about nothing. The weather, the bookshop, her philanthropic efforts. She didn’t mention a partner. Not that it mattered to Draco… She also didn't ask about his magic. Didn't ask what he was doing with his life. Maybe she already knew? More likely, she just didn't care.
They exchanged telephone information—likely an obligatory gesture from her Gryffindor bleeding heart. But before leaving, she reached out hesitantly to touch his arm. "Take care of yourself."
Just four words. Why did they sting so fucking badly?
Probably because he didn’t know how to take care of himself.
He stood there for almost twenty minutes afterwards, staring unseeingly at the poetry she'd been looking for before she was deterred by his presence.
Was he half the man he used to be? Was he ever whole to begin with?
~ ~ ~
Punches thrown in the name of someone I no longer know.
"Out of all the places to run into a Death Eater prick…"
The voice cut through the post-show haze, through the rain and the ringing in his ears from the amps. He turned, cigarette dangling from his lips, to find Ronald-fucking-Weasley of all people, anger and magic radiating off of him in waves.
Draco just barked a cold laugh. He couldn’t muster much of anything else.
It had already been a hellscape of a show, and here he was in search of a solitary cigarette to level out the cocktail of drugs and alcohol in his system. But, no. Of course he would run into the red headed git in Muggle London. Good fortune didn’t exist for Draco Lucius Malfoy.
“Preying on Muggles in alleyways now that you don’t have first years to torture?”
He let the cigarette fall from his fingers. "Fuck off Weasel. Just–” He could feel his control slipping away at the same time the exhaustion was setting in. He needed to just walk away. “fuck off, yeah?”
"I should report you–”
“To who Weasley?! For what? The Ministry?” He barked out another humourless laugh, “Be my fucking guest. They don’t give a shit whether I live or die.”
Ron smirked with a cruel and amused sense of power that ironically, reminded Draco of the Death Eaters the wizard across from him hated so much. “Well I care. And I’d much rather see you dead… or rotting in Azkaban until death finds you there too. You deserve to turn to dust and blow with the rest of your lot.” His opponent stepped forward, reaching into his pocket to pull out what Draco could only assume was his wand.
And in an alley of Muggle London of all places… The guy really was a fucking twat.
Draco probably should have just left it. Could have walked onto the street and flagged a taxi. Could have turned back into the venue and hopefully never seen The Worst Weasley ever again. He could have done literally anything other than what he did.
In a bloody satisfying crack, his fist connected with the red head’s jaw.
They went down in a tangle of limbs and rain-slicked pavement. The shock alone must have stopped Ron from pulling his wand because Draco got in two more hits before strong hands grabbed at his arms, yanking him back.
"Break it up! Break it up!"
Blue and red lights painted the silhouette of a wizard he had once hated and been jealous of in equal measure. The self awareness of that thought struck him once more and he closed his eyes.
A radio crackled with static. The rain dripped off the hair that covered his face and dripped into his open mouth.
Draco didn’t resist when they cuffed him.
~ ~ ~
I gave your name as my emergency phone call.
The cop shop smelled like disinfectant and desperation.
"Emergency contact?" The officer sounded bored, as if they had spent their entire career penning forms such as these.
Draco's mind was still swimming, both with the drugs and the events of the evening. The room tilted slightly and he opened his eyelids wide—a last ditch effort at improving his awareness.
Who was his Muggle emergency contact? He knew Rick’s number, but the degenerate was probably three women deep putting whatever was in the vicinity up his nose by now. He squeezed his eyes shut trying to recall the numbers of Theo’s Muggle telephone which he kept on him for moments such as these. No luck.
"Hermione Granger," he heard himself say, reciting with perfect clarity the numbers she’d entered into his cell six months ago. The contact card he’d looked at almost every night since but never called. His thumb had hovered over the button countless times, but he’d been too untethered to even internally unpack why he wanted to, nevermind be able to articulate it. Tonight however, it served him that those numbers were burned behind his eyelids like a mirage.
The officer dialed, putting it on speaker.
It rang and rang and rang.
Draco counted—eyes still closed—knowing what was coming next. It was seven rings before it went to voicemail. Her voice, bright just as he last remembered with a hint more of professionalism: "You've reached Hermione Granger. Please leave a message."
The officer looked at him with something that could have almost been pity. "Want to try someone else?"
"Try again," Draco responded, laying his forehead on the cool metal table. "Please."
The sliver of sympathy must have won out, because the officer punched in the numbers once more.
This time it rang four times. On the fifth, two rings early, it reached her voicemail. She'd rejected the call.
Draco closed his eyes. Of course she didn't answer. Why would she? He was nothing to her. A ghost from a war she was still working to forget, a Death Eater's son who threw away his own life and thought somehow, drunk and desperate, that she'd care.
"Let me try one more time," he pleads, hating how his voice cracks. "Please. I’ll sign whatever you need me to sign. I’ll stay as long as you need until she answers. I’ll—”
A different officer, the kind of burly man that was summoned to take someone to a holding cell, put his hand on Draco’s shoulder.
"Son, you need to give us someone who'll actually pick up, or else you’re going to be here for a while."
~ ~ ~
Last time I was in the back of a cop car, I fell in love
March 1998
He'd been running a makeshift safe house for Muggleborns in Dover, using his family's money to buy them fake papers and reassign their wands to seem that they belonged to some obscure pureblood line. It was bullshit. Very expensive bullshit.
Draco never expected it would last. And once his “fellow” Death Eaters caught wind of the underground operation that had not yet been traced back to him, the Snatchers had shown up at dawn.
He’d played the perfect part of course—what was Draco Lucius Malfoy if not a chameleon and showman. He could switch roles at the drop of a quill.
What he did not expect as he entered the tent that the Snatchers had apparated him and his “prisoners” to, was to find Hermione Granger, bloodied and bound, on her knees before a group of brutes heckling her.
"Malfoy?" She'd sounded shocked.
"Granger."
He'd denounced her immediately. Called her Mudblood with the perfectly practiced elitist venom in his voice, and turned over his prisoners with theatrical disgust. It might have been the performance of his life. Little did anyone know that his heart hammered against his ribs at a pace that might have undone him if her life weren’t on the line.
They'd thrown her to the ground in the corner of the tent to wait for transport to the Ministry. In the chaos, Draco slipped her wand back into her bound hands with shaking fingers, whispering the location of the safe house's emergency portkey. The canvas walls flapped in the wind. He wondered with premature sorrow if it was the last time he'd ever see the sky.
"Why?" she'd asked finally, so quiet the Snatchers wouldn't hear.
He didn't answer. Couldn't. How do you explain that you're trying to trade small good deeds for a soul you're not sure you ever had?
She'd turned her head to look at him then, really look at him, with those bright golden brown orbs that saw far too much. "You're trying to be better than you were."
Not a question. A statement. An absolution he didn't deserve.
And in that tent, with its canvas walls and bodied dirt floors, Draco Malfoy fell completely and irrevocably for Hermione Granger.
~ ~ ~
Son, why do you do this to yourself?
The officer that took over his processing was older, grey-haired, with kind eyes that Draco didn’t deserve.
He was slumped in the plastic chair now, hands shaking uncontrollably. When did they start shaking?
"I need to ask you something, and I need you to answer honestly." The officer leaned forward, fixing him with a look that blended pity and concern. "Are you… a danger to yourself?"
The question hung in the fluorescent-lit air between them.
Draco opened his mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"Yeah…" he finally forced the word out in a choked, barely discernible whisper, "Yes.I think I am."
It was the first honest thing he'd said in three years. Maybe longer. The words felt like they were being pulled from somewhere deep in his chest. Speaking them aloud was uncomfortable as vomiting.
"Have been for a while, if I'm being real."
The officer nodded slowly. "We're going to get you sorted out, alright? There are people who can help."
Who does he do this to himself?
He doesn’t even bother uttering the words out loud. The question is for himself. He’s asking the ghost of who he used to be, asking Hermione's voicemail, asking the memory of his father’s cutting glare and mother’s tearful goodbye, asking and yet all the while cursing the war that took everything.
The internal truth vomit rears its ugly head again.
He does this because he’d rather destroy himself than forgive himself.
The officer didn’t say anything. Just slid the cup of water across the desk and gave Draco space to break.
~ ~ ~
I dial drunk, I'll die a drunk, I'd die for you
The cell was quiet.
Three other men slept on benches, while Draco sat in the corner with his knees pulled to his chest, coming down from the alcohol, the adrenaline, the years of endless running.
His citation was folded in his pocket. Pulling it out and asking the officer who continued checking on him for a pen, the blonde former-wizard flattened the crumpled piece of paper out on his thigh, and in the quiet of the stale cell, he wrote.
I tried to become someone else Grew my hair out, changed my name Thought if I ran far enough I could outrun the shame
But you can't kill a ghost By pretending you're already dead And you can't love someone new When you're drowning in regret
I'm not asking for forgiveness Not calling out your name I'm just finally getting honest About who I need to blame
It wasn’t good, it was barely fucking coherent. But it was real in a way that the songs he had written previously never were. He hadn’t felt the heartbreak in the songs he wrote for the women in the front row at every show, didn’t fully understand the lyrics on Muggle politics that he infused into their more popular songs about rebellion.
This however, this was all him. And it was terrifying.
This was Draco Malfoy, stripped of magic and pretense. An exiled ex Death Eater finally admitting that he'd been subconsciously punishing himself for sins that on the surface, he’d laid the blame for on everyone else.
When they released him in the morning with a court date and a warning, he didn't go home. He walked to the Thames, stood on the bridge, and watched the sun come up over a world that didn’t owe him anything.
He still didn’t have his magic. Still hadn’t scratched the surface of the work he needed to do to right this ship.
But for the first time in a long time, he had something that felt like a foundation that could be built off of.
Draco pulled out his phone. His thumb hovered over her name in his contact list for a moment that felt like it stretched on and on. This was stupid. She had rejected his call twice last night. There was absolutely no reason she should show up for a demon from her past, especially when he couldn’t even be there for the ghost of his own.
He was learning though, trying to be honest about what he wanted, even when he didn't deserve it.
He pressed the little green phone emblem.
It rang once. Twice. Three times.
On the fourth ring, it clicked.
Silence. Then, tentative, uncertain, her voice broke through.
"Draco?"
He closed his eyes, gripped the phone tighter, and for the first time since his Wizengamot trial, Draco let himself hope.