Burning Man

Part 5

Metal Heart



Granger sat before me, her soft, nimble hands folded in front her, the quill easily balanced and waiting for our voices to fill the room like it had done for countless of sessions before this one. I stared at her and waited for her to start yet she stared back like I was supposed to start this madness all over again. The words itched in my mouth, I was supposed to defend myself. Tell her I wasn\'t a criminal, explain why I thought I was here. I looked around the room and then back at her as she waited patiently.



“How long have I been here? In St. Mungo\'s,” I asked, she blinked, the only indication that she had heard me.



“A year in five days,” she answered after a long pause, I nodded.



“I don\'t kill people that don\'t deserve it, how long do I have to stay here until you all figure out that I\'m not crazy and that these people are just making me crazy?” I growled, looking deeply into her eyes, I was done staring at her like a forbidden fruit, done with playing her games, done with playing everyone\'s games. I just wanted my normal life back-



“I want to see my wife. You know that Dudley Dursley was a deranged psychopath, he had tried to kill me and so I beat him to the punch and got rid of him first. I don\'t deserve this. I just want to see Ginny again and Ron, I want to see my family,” I pleaded, she looked so sad, like she was fighting a losing battle with such an amount of grief and pain. I realized that it wasn\'t her keeping me from my best friend and my wife, it was someone else. I got up, my hands still bound to the table top as I looked around the room.



“I want my normal life back. I want to the chance to have childre-” I started but Hermione got up suddenly. She hurriedly went to the door, opening it and slamming it behind her, I blinked, amazed at her reaction.



“What\'s the difference between defending yourself and taking revenge?” I breathed, forcing my tears to stay in my eyes as I stared around the room, waiting for the guards to come and gather me up, bring me back to my room. I slowly sat down and blinked, Hermione was back, sitting there, waiting for me to begin. And so I began.



“I\'m not a criminal Hermione. I did what I had to do and you know as well as I do that I would never kill anybody unless I had to,” I breathed, she shook her head, her dark honey colored silk curls falling over her soft shoulders...



I was walked back to my room, passing by an open door with a woman standing there. She was the new girl, her eyes following me as I kept my own to the ground before me. I didn\'t want to look, couldn\'t look. I didn\'t want to see if I recognized her or half recognized her or didn\'t at all yet she recognized me, it was maddening meeting new people for me anymore because I was Harry Potter and everyone knew me.



“So Scarhead is just as crazy as all the papers say. What a pity,” the woman taunted after me, I remember that voice, a pug faced little Slytherin girl came to mind with a cold stare. Terry Boot closed the door behind me and I sat down on my bed, looking out the window at the well trimmed grounds below. Pansy Parkinson was now deemed crazy and is committed here along with me, was the world trying to keep me in hell?



Part 6

Trauma



Hermione stood next to me, watching Harry go through the motions with out her. It was eerily disconcerting to watch him wait for a response out of the air, hearing what had been said to him so many times before, reacting the exact same way that he always did. I looked over at Hermione as she wept into her hands, trying to block out Harry\'s voice with her own. I wrapped my arms around her and she let me. I sighed and combed my fingers through her soft hair. She hiccuped, scrubbing at her face angrily.



“We\'re due at the Ministry in twenty minutes,” Hermione whispered, pulling away from me, I nodded and followed her out as the guards came in to collect Harry and bring him back to his room.



“Mr. Malfoy, Mrs. Weasley,” the head of the Department of Magical Evidence greeted us as we walked in. I nodded to him and Hermione began talking with the old man about how things were going and all that. Soon we were in front of Harry\'s Pensieve. We had pulled all the memories out that we could when we first got him to St. Mungo\'s so we could analyze it all. He had been keeping one for some time and so it was easy to get him to cooperate and add what had happened during the years since we had all gotten out of school and defeated Voldemort. It was strange to think that it had been 6 years since it had all happened, almost 7 actually. The war didn\'t seem all that long ago but the years had passed and times had changed drastically since then.



“Draco? Would you mind going first?” Hermione murmured, gesturing to the Pensieve, I took a deep breathe and plunged my head into the icey depths of Harry Potter\'s darkest, deepest memories.



TBC



Notes: Yeah...I kinda recently discovered the Harry Potter Lexicon and been having a field day with it. So very, very interesting. It\'s like a fanfiction writer\'s wet dream...anyways, I hope you like this chapter. Oh and just to warn you, the next is going to be waaaaay darker and written in a slightly different style than this one.