Chapter One- Seconds

Healing is a long process.

For outside injuries, it's a simple formula. Injury + Treatment + Time = Healed. You can track the process of the healing, and you can determine what you need to adjust to return everything to normal- muscle, blood and bone.

When they're inside, it's a little bit different. First, you have to acknowledge the injury. Then, you have to want help. And even then, you have to find the right person to help you, even if that person is yourself.

Draco Malfoy was about to discover this latter problem with healing in precisely two minutes and forty- three seconds.

…

Voldemort was killed by his own rebounding curse.

There was a great silence, a space of time where everyone's heartbeats paused and everyone took a breath, as if preparing themselves for the onslaught of emotion to come.

And then there was a roar. A giant, ear-splitting roar, reverberating like the inside of a giant bell, screaming its way up to the heavens and declaring itself loudly to the sky. Everyone screeched and yelled and cried, because it was over, it was finally over at last, and the relief was the greatest thing that everyone had ever felt.

Draco, standing off to the side, concealed barely over the edge between "good" and "evil", felt relief, but also a numb sort of emptiness. It was over. That repeated in his head, counting the times until he actually believed it. It was over. It was over. It was over.

And because it actually was, he sank to his knees with a sob.

It was over, he thought.

And- what are they going to do to me now?

…

In the midst of the chaos, Draco spotted his father.

His mother, he knew, was over by the teachers of Hogwarts, with her familiar commanding air only barely weakened by Voldemort's grasp. She had jumped right into the middle, healing and helping. If she hadn't been a Pureblood debutante, married off to his father, he suspected she would have been a healer.

Narcissa had coped the only way she knew how, throwing herself into the middle to save her family like she always had. That was another thing about his mother- in the middle of the Pureblood ideals she had always loved her family.

But it was his father who distracted him now.

His father had his wand out.

His wand was pointed at the back of an unsuspecting someone.

Twenty-six seconds left-

That someone was Hermione Granger.

…

In the middle of all the happiness, there was one more bolt of green light.

Draco didn't know where it came from, didn't know how he opened his mouth or why he was saying the words, all he knew that if he didn't say it, his father would.

"Avada… Kedavra". The words sprang from his mouth and burned his tongue, racing towards his father. They tasted like poison.

The words struck the man who had raised him, had rocked him on his lap once when he was very small, then never again.

Draco couldn't call the curse back.

Lucius Malfoy crumpled to the floor, and Draco thought suddenly that Harry and he were exactly the same- caught in a moment, transfixed to the floor, with the stunned air of reality that they had killed someone, right now, and there was no going back.

…

Hermione Granger didn't even notice Lucius hit the floor.

Later, though, she would stop beside his body, kneel to check his pulse, and then look up at Draco with sad, sad eyes, burning with sorrys and I wish this never happened and are you okay?

Draco couldn't meet her eyes after that. He was afraid that she'd see them and know, somehow, that he'd killed his own parent.

He would think the act was vaguely heroic, if he knew that he was definitely not a hero.

…

Narcissa would look at the body of her husband, and her lip would tremble, but she would bite down on it fiercely because she knew that this was a new life being offered up in the form of a dead man.

And she would accept it, because wasn't that what everyone was doing?

…

Twenty-five minutes exactly after Lucius hit the floor, Draco had the strangest conversation he would ever remember having in his life.

Harry Potter was standing right in front of him, and he met his eyes.

Draco said three words, first.

"Thanks."
and "I'm sorry."

For what exactly, he didn't know. Everything, he supposed.

For Harry, that seemed to be enough.

The conversation hadn't really started yet, but it was getting abnormal anyways, when Harry freaking Potter held out his hand.

Draco took it, shook it, and Harry pulled him to his feet. The green eyes were not accusatory, or hateful, just curious and a little sad.

"You alright, Malfoy?"

And that was The Saint Who Lived To Get Touchy-Feely About Emotions. Draco briefly considered a sarcastic comment or a witty reply, but somehow he didn't feel up to it. It had the same sort of feeling as bashing your head against a wall.

"I'll be fine." He hoped.

Harry nodded, and it was left to Draco to ask one question that he never thought he'd ask.

"Are you okay. Potter." It turned out more like a statement, but never let it be said that Draco was going to start talking about his feelings.

Harry flipped some hair out of his grimy face, and said the statement which Draco would get the full implications of about thirty minutes after that.

"It's hard to kill someone else, even if you know that that someone was just plain wrong. You know."

A redhead called Harry back over to them, and he clapped Draco on the shoulder-like a comrade, like a friend- and headed back to the adoring crowd.

…

Thirty minutes later.

"You know."

Potter SAW?

Draco stopped in the middle of the Great Hall, shocked.

Turned to find Potter in the crowd.

Who nodded, and turned back to his friends.

You know.

…

A/N

So, what do you guys think? This is going to be a multichap fic- not sure how many, however long it takes the story to play out- and I know that there isn't much romance in the first chapter, but trust me, it will be a Dramione.

I would like at least one review before I post the next chapter- but I will start writing it RIGHT NOW, I promise.

Thank you so much for even reading. I appreciate.

-Isefyr