Draco Malfoy, Broken

Chapter 23 - Future

23 - Future

Draco woke up when he hit the floor. His dream hadn't been from his memories, for once. He pulled his arms closer, his eyes were wet with tears. It was so real... so... accurate, like the power of Divination had finally reached him. He saw the future, the harsh painful reality of it. He could do nothing to stop it.

It started on the train... Harry was trying to find them a compartment, but there were none to be found. Every time they went to a car, their classmates would greet Harry excited and happy. But as soon as they saw he was with the Chosen One, they shout and scream and pushed them out the door, calling both of them traitors. They went to the end of the train... but they were shut out of everywhere.

They went to the Great Hall and Harry made him sit with him. Harry's friends, the ones he'd lived with for his whole time at school, got up and moved to the other end. They walked the halls... their former friends spit on him, on Harry. Whispering... always whispering. Traitor, Death Eater, murderer, Voldemort-lover... it wasn't even directed at him... they were attacking Harry. All the blame went on him. He choose Draco... he betrayed them.

The argument Harry had with Ron was so similar to the one in Diagon Alley. Ron punched him, saying he hated him and he choose the darkness, the filthy Death Eater. That their friendship was over, though Harry begged him to reconsider. Ron didn't listen, only hexed him, Hermione too, firmly on her boyfriend's side. They said that he shouldn't have picked Malfoy.

The professors treated Harry like a spoiled potion, even McGonagall. She said that she couldn't believe Harry had convinced her to let scum into her school. She threw them into the Slytherin house. Crabbe, Goyle, Marcus Flint, Millicent Bulstrode, Voldemort's supporters, came and beat the crap out of them. Harry couldn't stop them, couldn't save either of them. Harry told him that it was all his fault. That he had picked wrong and he should have stayed in Azkaban with the rest of the Death Eaters. Harry pulled out his wand, though Draco begged him not to and Crucioed him. He pleaded for Harry to stop, but he didn't. He screamed and screamed. No one saved him.

That was when he fell out of bed. He dragged himself to a sitting position of the floor. He rocked back and forth, trying to stop from crying. Not from what Dream Harry did, not from what the others did to him, but for what they did to Harry.

Draco was a disease... he would infect Potter. He would drag him down into the muck. Harry would be the one hurt, instead of him. It was his crimes, his actions that brought all of this on. It was his fault. It would be his fault. Harry wasn't supposed to save someone like him. He wasn't supposed to like someone like him. Draco cried, harder.

Harry was the champion of the righteous. He was pure goodness. The epitome of a true Gryffindor.

Draco was tainted. Impure... evil... a Death Eater... he was the bad guy. He didn't deserve happiness. He didn't deserve to be free, upright and walking around. He barely deserved to live. He couldn't let Harry debase himself anymore by aligning with him, a marked enemy. Harry didn't deserve to be an outcast like him. He had given up so much.

Though Draco knew his dream had been fairly inaccurate, (McGonagall and Hermione would never act like that), but the rest of their classmates and especially, Ron, would crucify the Savior for switching to darkness. Harry might get some backlash for getting him out of prison, but they could accept that he fixing injustice, even if they didn't know what happened. But if he showed up, hand-in-hand with a Slytherin, not only the son of a Death Eater, but a marked too, they would never accept it. They would do everything in their power to break them, break Harry. Draco could not allow that, he realized.