Not Quite Dark Magic

Euphoric

Draco ended up staying in his new bare bedroom that night. He had apparated back to the manor with the pretense of sleeping there. He broke after only 15 minutes, just enough time for him to ache from the loneliness in his chest and grab a change of clothes. He was in an even worse mood than his argument with Granger had put him in. He shoved his Occlumency shields back in place when he heard her muffled voice next door, talking to someone.

His shields were difficult to keep up, he noticed. He had to focus on them almost as hard as when he had first started learning from Snape. It irritated him to no end knowing how hard he had to fight for privacy in his own mind. But he would not be a vulnerable Hufflepuff to Granger. She would only feel the emotions he let her in on, even if he had to put all his energy into protecting his mind.

When Pansy and Theo barged into his room, hovering hot plates of food behind them, he wavered between relief and anger.

"You've improved a lot, even since the last time I saw you."

Draco lifted his head up for that. The two apparently not dead, supposed best friends of his had been chatting noncommittally to him for the past thirty minutes. It annoyed him how they seemed to know what he needed.

"What are you on about, Nott?"

Theo smiled, seemingly unaffected by Draco's foul tone.

"Your Occlumency shields. I bet the Weasley's downstairs will hit a brick wall when they try to come up for bed."

Draco grimaced, but pulled back a bit anyways. "You were always shite at Occlumency."

"Three years ago, sure. But now," he took a bite of his dinner roll, "I can hold my own."

Draco raised his eyebrows. "Did you want to test that out? I bet the Order has much lower standards than the Malfoy's."

Theo and Pansy shared a look and both turned to him with malicious smiles. "Well let's put that theory to the test, shall we? My Order versus your Death Eater?"

Draco didn't flinch. He merely grabbed Theo by the neck and dove into his mind.

His shields had gotten better. It took Draco seven shoves before he gave in.

He showed Draco a variety of memories, from the moment Pansy and him had decided to defect, to the many Order meetings and frighteningly enough, funerals he had attended since joining.

He watched with mild indignation as the two Slytherin's sat with only each other, looking frightened and alone. With each passing memory the regret seemed to grow in Theo's expressions.

He watched Theo's binding ceremony, watched as he wrapped his arms around the girl who had sneered at him the day before, calling him names and taunting Pansy. Draco tried to back out, but Theo thrust his next memory particularly hard and Draco couldn't resist.

It seemed to happen just hours after the binding. Theo was alone on the roof, smoking a muggle cigarette. Draco hardly recognized the area without the expansion of the roof being charmed on it. Apparently this was before they used it as a training ground.

The door thrust open then and Ginny sauntered through, hair blowing behind her as the wind hit it. She approached Theo slowly with a hand over her chest.

"I'm sorry," she whispered, eyes looking out on the horizon.

Theo didn't reply, merely took another drag. He held it in for an obscene amount of time. Ginny sighed.

"I know it's not enough, and I'm sorry for that too. If I would have known what you'd been feeling this whole time," she reached out and put her other hand on his chest, placed exactly where hers was, and he froze. "Then I would have been less inclined to judge and more likely to embrace you as the person you are, the person you presented to us, and not as the person I made you out to be."