Triumph Out of the Bitter Taste of Ashes

AN: Finally we find a little bit of humor amid the confusion. : )

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Chapter Four
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Draco pulled back suddenly, rising to his feet awkwardly, suddenly all too aware of the very *public* hallway they were in. \"I can\'t believe we both blubbered like babies!\" he muttered, uncomfortably aware of the blush color his face.

Ron chuckled uneasily, lowering his glance to the floor after a quick glance behind him. \"Yeah, me neither.\"

Frowning, Draco too, glanced away from Ron then back again. \"No one hears about this, right?\" He needed to make sure. He still wasn\'t completely comfortable with the red-headed Gryffindor, but adversity and bedfellows and all that. *Not* that, that could be taken literally, he quickly amended silently, just metaphorically. He almost rolled his eyes as his thoughts started getting a touch ridiculous.

Ron nodded enthusiastically. \"Agreed. No one.\"

Draco sighed in relief his expression relaxing for one brief moment before it hardened suddenly. \"This doesn\'t mean I like you, you know, because I don\'t.\"

\"Course not,\" Ron replied easily, a crooked grin growing. \"Doesn\'t mean I like you either, \'cuz I don\'t.\"

\"Good,\" Draco replied, suddenly back to feeling relieved, \"glad that\'s settled.\" He had to get out of here. He needed to go back to his room and just . . . *be*. He needed time to figure it all out, to sort through the whiplash of emotional highs and lows he\'d been seesawing between lately.

\"Truce, then?\" Ron asked hesitantly, \a soa sort.\"

Draco hesitated briefly, then nodded once. \"Truce.\"

Ron stuck out his hand, and despite the fact that this was *Weasley*, Draco was irresistibly reminded of the day he had offered his own hand to Harry Potter. This time, however, the offer on the table was slightly different, and Draco had no intention of refusing it; though, he was fairly certain it was going to be rather large adjustment -- one he wasn\'t altogether certain he could make. He tilted his head thoughtfully for a moment. \"You know, I don\'t think I can go cold turkey on the insults -- not right away anyhow.\"

Ron laughed genuinely then. \"Of course not, \'sides, I think the two of us getting along too well would give the lot of them heart attacks.\"

It was Draco\'s turn to chuckle, but that quickly turned into something approaching his usual smirk as he pictured everyone trying to figure out what, exactly, was going on. \"Might be worth it at that, just to watch \'em squirm.\"

Ron\'s eyes widened. \"Okay, now you\'re scaring me.\"

Draco blinked. \"How?\"

\"You sounded just like Fred and George there, just before they try out a new gag.\"

Draco\'s jaw dropped incredulously. \"Did you just compare me to your brothers?\" he asked when he could speak. He could not believe Ron Weasley had just compared him to those two. . . . He couldn\'t think up an appropriate name at the moment. He would try later.

A slight squeak escaping, Ron nodded once. \"I think I did.\"

\"Okay,\" Draco said after a long moment of silence, \"this is getting too weird. I\'m not pissed at you for that.\"

Ron\'s eyes widened. \"You\'re right, that is weird.\"

Voices echoing down the hallway startled both of them, and without further words, they both strode different directions -- Draco deeper into the dungeons, and Ron back toward the first floor.

Draco shook his head trying to clear his thoughts. It didn\'t work very well, unfortunately. He was still thinking about the strange encounter with the Weasel. The strangest part out of all the weirdness that was *that* conversation, was the fact that *he* had started it. Out of all the people he could have gone to--

//Right! Like who?//

--he\'d asked *Weasley* why.

Then, he was angry, as suddenly as that. He gasped as the rage flowed through him so unexpectedly. \"Why did you guys have to go and do it for?!\" he shouted, listening to his voice echo along the stone hallway. He wanted to lash out, to rage, to do *anything* but feel so damn confused and alone. He wanted answers, desperately; though, he didn\'t really expect to get them. It was too much to hope that those idiot goons of his would end up as ghosts just so he, Draco Malfoy, could get answers to questions he never thought he\'d ask.

He\'d been born to lead, raised to it. He\'d had it drilled into him with his mother\'s milk that he was better than most everyone else. He\'d believed in it all, utterly, for so long, and had acted on it, treating the people around him as servants or annoyances for the most part. Only a few had moved past that into the sphere of near equals. So, why didn\'t it feel right that people had died to protect him?

He didn\'t want to admit it, but the suspicions growing slowly louder in the back of his mind were getting harder and harder to ignore, to deny. He felt guilty. He didn\'t want to, but he did. Draco was beginning to suspect that, as with Potter and his fame, he hadn\'t done one damn thing to earn the loyalty Crabbe and Goyle had given him. That really did not sit well. It made what they\'d done even more confusing . . . and, truth be told, terrifying.

If *they* could feel that way, be ready to die for someone else, would *he* come to feel that way about someone? He gulped, not liking that thought at all. He wasn\'t some brave, stupid Gryffindor to feel things like that.

//Neither were Crabbe and Goyle, and look what they did.//

He shook his head, chasing out that unwanted thought. He didn\'t want to die. He wasn\'t ready for that. He should be grateful they\'d done it. So, he didn\'t understand it. So what? Did it really matter in the end? They were dead and he was alive.

\"Fuck yes, it matters!\" Draco shouted.

\"And just what, pray tell, matters,\" Professor Snape said from behind him, the quiet words sending Draco\'s heart into his throat, beating wildly.

Draco whirled around. \"Is there anyone you\'d die to save?\" he spat out, speaking, for one of the few times in his life, without thinking about it at all. When the professor\'s eyes widened briefly before his expression settled back into one far more familiar, Draco did wonder if he shouldn\'t have thought before asking after all.

After several long moments, where Draco seriously considered running off before the touchy professor could flay him verbally, the man nodded slowly, once.

Draco\'s eyes widened. **Even Professor Snape!?** \"I don\'t understand that,\" he whispered, shaking his head again. \"I thought all that self-sacrificing heroism was a *Gryffindor* trait.\"

An amused, condescending -- in Draco\'s opinion -- smirk flitted across the professor\'s mouth. \"Anyone can be brave, Mr. Malfoy . . . given the right set of circumstances. Rarely is the world as black and white as you children see it. It is filled with shades of grey, filled with choices that are very, very rarely entirely right or entirely wrong. In fact, most of the decisions adults come to in this world are what they consider \'the lesser of two evils\' -- to borrow an oft used cliche.\"

Draco stiffened at the sneering of the word children. He wasn\'t a child anymore. That had been lost to him three weeks ago. It had been lost to them all.

\"Now that we have *that* little childish illusion cleared up, perhaps you\'d care to share what \'matters\' so much that you\'ve resorted to shouting vulgar profanity in the hallways of this school?\"

Draco winced. One day over three weeks ago, his use of that \'vulgar profanity\' would have lost him house points, and earned him detention . . . *even* from Professor Snape. It was a measure of just how much had changed, how much *everyone* was still reeling that all he received was the censure of disdain.

Glancing down at his feet, unwilling to meet Professor Snape\'s unrelenting gaze, Draco shuffled a bit before responding, lifting his head enough to stare over the professor\'s shoulder. \"I\'d been trying to tell myself it didn\'t matter that I didn\'t understand. They\'re dead. I\'m alive. The *why* didn\'t matter.\"

\"It doesn\'t.\"

Draco\'s eyes shot to Professor Snape\'s, even as they widened in outright shock.

\" \'In the end\', Mr. Malfoy, the *why* doesn\'t matter at all. As you said, they are dead and you are alive. The only reason the why matters now . . . is because you want it to.\"

Hearing his thoughts echoed back at him, thoughts he\'d already rejected, angered and shocked Draco. \"How can you say that?\" he hissed. \"They purposely gave their lives for me. I\'d say it matters one hell of a lot!\"

\"I can say that, Mr. Malfoy, because it\'s true. We can speculate until we are as old and greythe the headmaster, but we will *never* know for sure why they did it. Perhaps they simply believed that you needed to live more than they did. Perhaps they truly *cared*. Perhaps they believed it was their *duty* to protect you . . . at all costs.\" Professor Snape sighed and shook his head before continuing. \"The point is, that we will never know, no matter how much we guess at the reasons, and unless they come back as ghosts -- Merlin forfend -- we can not ask. You should take the gift they\'ve given you and use it. Don\'t take for granted what they died to grant you.\"

Swallowing, Draco nodded hesitantly.

\"The only thing I can reasonably tell you about Misters Crabbe and Goyle was that they *obviously* believed that you knew what you were doing. It was to you they gave r lor loyalty, over and above that of myself, Dudoredore, and *even* Voldemort. They believed you were worth it. Don\'t prove them wrong. Prove them right, Mr. Malfoy.\"

On the heels of that, and Draco\'s startled gasp, Professor Snape strode off, leaving Draco reeling. While that wasn\'t exactly a new sensation lately, this time it had a different feel to it. He spun suddenly, calling out.

\"You never said who, Professor!\"

Professor Snape stopped, twisting only his upper body around to stare at Draco. He looked long and hard before replying. \"When you can come to me and tell me there is someone you would die to protect -- and *mean* it -- I will tell you who it is for me,\" he said, almost too softly to hear. Then without further word or hesitation disappeared around the corner.

Bemused, but strangely, no longer feeling so near the edge, Draco turned and headed to toward the Slytherin dormitory. Professor Snape was right. He needed to reclaim his life. He sighed and wished it was as simple as that. So much had changed, nothing seemed to be the same. His father was dead -- that had been confirmed that night. And despite hirld rld having been wrenched out from under him, Draco had felt an everlasting gratitude that his father had not been part of the attack on Hogwarts, still felt it.

He wanted to believe his father hadn\'t known about the attack. He wanted to believe his father wouldn\'t have approved something that would have so risked his only son\'s life. He ruthlessly crushed the sneaking suspicion that it was a fruitless wish. He\'d learned details the last three weeks that made his stomach churn and bile rise in his throat, things that he *had* to believe his father was incapable of being part of.

His mother, on the other hand, had completely disappeared.

\"Sensortia,\" Draco muttered, the Slytherin password coming to his tongue automatically. He stepped through the portrait hole and headed directly to his own room. His thought about mothers had reminded him, he had a task to perform, a note to write. Weasley had tried to help him, now it was his turn to return the favor. Quid pro quo. He was used to that. That was something he understood, and he, in no way, wished to be indebted to anyone else. His unrepayable debt to the two who had shadowed almost his entire school career was debt enough in his opinion.

He sat, pulling out quill, ink, and parchment, and before long he was busy writing.


      Greetings Mrs. Weasley,

      I\'m fully aware that I am one of the last people you ever expected to hear from; however, I felt it was my duty to write to inform you of a matter that needs your immediate attention.

      Your son, Ronald Weasley, stood beside me protecting a room of first and second year students, children unable to protect themselves. Of course, I\'m certain you are already aware of this as it is pretty much common knowledge. What you may not be aware of, is the fact that, despite all this, he feels guilty that he was unable to save his sister.

      Despite the fact that he had no idea where she was, despite the fact that he would have had to abandon the children to go find her, he believes he should have been able to protect her. He also believes, and I sincerely hope he is wrong, that you and your husband also blame him for Virginia\'s death. It is tearing him apart, and it is my belief that, eventually, it will destroy him.


Draco hesitated before continuing, then sighed carefully wording his next request.


      I would also appreciate your discretion in this matter as I\'m not sure he would appreciate my bringing this to your attention. I have done so, because I believe it necessary, and would hate to think this course of action would hinder the very tentative truce we have established.


      Sincerely yours,
      Draco Octavian Malfoy


Draco quickly scanned the short note he\'d written, scowling as he reached his signature. He *really* hated his middle name. Nothing for it, however, proper protocol was also ingrained in him as deeply as the need to breathe. Satisfied with everything else, he quickly rolled the scroll and headed toward the owlery. This one last thing completed, he could sleep, and hope that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow might be a that much easier.

It was odd, really, that he was willingly writing to a member of the Weasley family, and he was not sure what kind of precedent he was setting by doing so. It was simply the only thing he could think of to repay the debt owed.

TBC
Kiristeen
Feedback craved like a chocoholic craves chocolate after a weekend at a health spa. : )~
Kiristeen@kiristeen.com


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Jen, Rilla -- Thanks! : )
Shemham -- Me too. I think part of it is my tendency to not want to see kids \'go bad\'. : )~ The other part is that \'turning the bad boy around\' syndrome. LOL Of course, the fact that he\'s a rather two dimensional character in the books, leaves me pondering his motives. The look when Potter turns him down in the first movie, fuels so much speculation. Whatever else is there, there is hurt at the rejection.
Deb -- Thanks. And yeah, those two are really hurting. Things will get be as as the two of them surprise the heck out of each other. ::smirks::

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