Sour Grapes

Chapter 10 - Welcome to the Carnival

Draco opened his eyes, feeling as though he had never gone to sleep. And yet, the sun was up and cascading in through the peaked bedroom windows of his small upper-floor bedroom. Typically, after a night at a party he would have had to re-remember who he was in the morning. In this case, it felt like his brain had never turned off, and the hours had simply moved by as he watched. He hadn't even had a chance to dread the oncoming day before it was simply... there.

He didn't regret the Skeeter article, as he refused to gather any more regrets after he left Azkaban. When he made decisions these days, they were always from a place of pure and steady conviction. Allowing Skeeter to print his exposé would open him up to all manner of personal attack and degradation of character. He'd gone from being a ghost to being the poster child of reformed death eaters. He was grateful that the majority of wizards who would take issue with this new image he was sporting so casually were mostly behind bars, and expected to remain so. However, there were the odd few who had managed to escape capture, not to mention the hundreds on the other side who would not be so easily convinced of his belonging in their post-Voldemort world.

Honestly, he feared the latter more. Death eaters, he could handle, and especially if he kept himself close to Potter and the ministry for protection. Inside him, the true fear resided in the fact that he had just removed his mask. He would be entering this world for the first time as himself, no veil of foreboding evil to rely on. The thought made him shiver. It wasn't that he didn't want this, it was in fact, all he had ever wanted.

The day that he had met Harry Potter, now that was a day he regretted. He'd meant to impress Potter that day, and he'd endeavored to do so with humor, but he chose the absolutely wrong joke. Potter had been soured on him from that moment on, and just seeing the way Potter had looked back at him had caused a pain in his heart and in his stomach that Draco could feel in his body even as he lay there merely recalling the memory of it. He and Potter spoke of this during one of their post-Azkaban meetings. They had even done this incredibly cheesy thing -Potter's idea, not Draco's- where they re-enacted the first meeting and had it end with them as friends.

Draco rolled his eyes at the mere thought of it. Potter loved cornball stuff like that. After the war, he'd participated in a number of programs around healing and recovery from trauma. Of anyone involved, Potter certainly needed it. And apart from helping him to move forward, he'd also found it a welcome new hobby and began running seminars for families of the fallen to support in re-building wizarding society from an entirely new culture and vantage point, one person at a time. He'd had a knack for it, and unfortunately -or fortunately- for Draco, he insisted on bringing these little activities and exercises into their meetings at the pub.

Much as he'd resisted it, Draco had benefitted greatly from those meetings. After a few months, however, the fear had begun to set in. Living in muggle London, donning muggle clothes, and generally staying away from the world he knew... it was too much longing to bear. It was like that children's story about the brothers who meet death and are given three magical objects: the unbeatable wand, the cloak of invisibility and the resurrection stone. The one with the stone brings back his dead lover's ghost, and then they both fall into a deep depression over not being able to fully be with one another. Eventually, the man kills himself so as to relieve the pain.

Draco wasn't fool enough to end his life, especially after how hard he had fought to keep it, and yet he did kill a part of himself when he ran off into hiding. Staying in Britain would have been like staying with a ghost.

He wanted to tell Potter, but he was sure that if he did, Potter would find a way to change his mind. If he had told Potter, he would have regretted it.

Potter had a streak of optimism that Draco both loathed and admired. While he wanted to learn from Potter, he was also acutely aware that there were so many things the man simply did not, and could not understand about Draco's life.