Disclaimer: I only wish I owned this stuff!

A/N: be forewarned! This story contains a TON of Half-Blood Prince spoilers. Don’t read if you haven’t read the book yet. Also, I wrote this one shot as a way to prove that the D/G ship is still quite possible, as is a redeemed!Draco. I also am not totally convinced of Snape’s guilt of being evil. So to all those who think he’s guilty. Only book 7 will answer those questions! So read, I hope I haven’t written a pile of garbage.

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What is it that I want and need the most in life? The scary thing is, for the longest time I had no answer for myself. Ever since I was ten years old I thought the answer to that question was Harry Potter. But then, in my fifth year, I got him. It was great while it lasted, but then at Dumbledore’s funeral it was all over.

Leave it to Harry to always play the hero. I could have lived with the fear of being hunted if it meant calling him mine. At that moment in life, I could have sworn he was the answer to everything. We were friends before, friends during, and now friends after our relationship. I am happy with that, really I am.

That summer was bitter sweet. Bill and Fleur’s wedding went off without a hitch. Bill’s wounds still present, but I have to give Phlegm… er… Fleur credit for remaining faithfully blind to them. As much as I hate to admit it, they really are perfect for each other.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione didn’t return to school that fall. Shortly after the wedding, they set off on a quest to find the remainder of Voldemort’s horcruxes. As it turns out, that old locket we found at Sirius’s two years ago was the real one that Harry’s fake had replaced. So it was three down, three to go. Thankfully Dumbledore had given Harry a good deal of information to go by, and the heroic trio was off to hunt down the rest. I had wanted to go with them, pleaded them actually. Since the governors had decided to keep the school open, it was decided that I really did need to continue on with school.

It was very odd to be back that year. Professor McGonagall was now Headmistress McGonagall, Professor Slughorn took over Snape’s head of house duties, and believe it or not, Hagrid was made the head of Gryffindor! Things were pretty quiet, all in all. In the wake of Harry’s absence, I was made the captain of the Quidditch team. We weren’t so bad, not the team we were the previous year, but in all honestly, no one seems to have had their heart in Quidditch so much those days.

The Slytherins behaved more snake-like than ever. Anyone could see how scared they were to admit they belong to that house. That year, there were very few of them. Most of their families had pulled them out of school. Merlin only knows why.

Draco Malfoy and Snape seemed to have disappeared completely. No one knew where they went. When they Apparated off that night after the fight in the astronomy tower where Dumbledore was murdered by Snape, they really did seem to just… vanish. At around Christmas time, the Order got wind of Snape being within the ranks of the Death Eaters again. However, still no word on the location of Malfoy.

A few months later, right as spring was started to come around, the oddest thing happened. Harry started to receive very vague, cryptic messages. They gave small insights to the workings of Voldemort and his henchmen; some even warned the Order of pending attacks on Hogwarts, Hogsmeade, and Diagon Alley. In the beginning they were unsigned, but on the third or fourth one, they had a simple signature of sorts in the lower right hand corner. HBP. Those three letters were it. Amazingly, Ron was the first one to figure it out. It was the Half-Blood Prince writing the messages. A couple days later while I was visiting Twelve Grimmauld Place, Harry nearly dumped an entire pitcher of pumpkin juice on me when he remembered who had admitted being the Half-Blood Prince nearly a year prior. As it was appearing to be, Severus Snape really wasn’t the evil git we had believed him to be for an entire year. A git yes, but evil? I guess not so much.

I know you’re all thinking, “You trusted him again so easily?!” We really didn’t. After we figured out the source of the messages, we treated them with even more suspicion than ever before (if that were even possible). Yet, time and time again, Snape seemed to have only the Order’s best interests in mind.

This pattern of life continued until I ended my sixth year. No major events had really happened over the course of the year. Harry, Ron, and Hermione had found two more of the remaining three horcruxes; Hufflepuff’s cup and a pair of Ravenclaw’s eyeglasses. After having all other recourses exhausted ten times over, everyone had come to the conclusion that the sixth horcrux was indeed Nagini. When I arrived at Grimmauld place after my last day at Hogwarts until the following fall, the entire Order was sitting around discussing the best way to destroy Nagini and gain access to Voldemort.

Things weren’t near as awkward with Harry as I had feared they would be. He simply smiled up at me when I entered the room and gave me a little wave before returning to the conversation. I suppose it was then, at that moment, that I finally realized he was not the answer to everything like I had once thought. There was just something in the way he looked at me; it was more like a brother regarding his sister. I suppose that year passed changed all of us in very subtle, yet important, ways. I took my seat between Lupin and my brother Bill, and spent the rest of that day listening. Since Harry had silently becoming the leader of the Order, I had been kept well informed throughout the year as to what had been occurring outside the walls of Hogwarts.

Two weeks into my summer stay at Grimmauld Place, it happened. This “it” I talk about now is still whispered about to this day. The exact events that lead to him showing up at the door are still not quite known, but as shocked as we were, it proved in the long run to be the best of circumstances.

That night in early July, only about three weeks until Harry’s eighteenth birthday, the entire Order of the Phoenix was sitting in the front parlor, relaxing and joking over a few butterbeers and firewhiskey. It had been a long day of following leads, and everyone felt that night was the perfect night to enjoy each others company. As Kingsley Shacklebolt was telling a rather humorous tale from his youth, there was a sudden thump at the front door…

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“Molly, did you hear that?”

I turned to my mother, wondering what, or who, in the name of Merlin could have made that sound. Everyone in the Order was sitting around me, save one person of course.

“Yes, Arthur, I did hear that. What on earth could it have been?”

“I’m not sure Mrs. Weasley, but I’m going to go find out.” Harry now had the stoic look of a man expecting the worst as he slowly stood up from his seat by the fire. “Ron, ‘Mione, follow close. Everyone else, stay back.”

I stood to follow as well. There is no way I’m not being a part of this! Harry’s immediate look of irritation was followed by resignation as I came up behind Hermione.

My heart froze upon seeing the shadow beneath the door. “Harry,” I whispered, “someone is standing outside?”

“Very observant, Sister-dear,” Ron said with only a touch of nervousness to his voice. You had to give the boy credit, the past year had quite hardened him into a brave, brave man.

Ever so slowly, Harry reached for the door. The rest of us stood right behind him with wands at the ready. His hand reached the door knob and quickly yanked the door open. There, curled up in a ball on the door step, was the one person we never thought we’d see again.

Draco Malfoy.

How he found Grimmauld Place was the last thing on our mind as Harry, Ron, and Hermione raced into the street to fend off any attackers waiting to surprise us. I noticed that Malfoy was badly injured. There he sat, covered in blood and dirt, shaking and trembling. I levitated his body into the house, and placed him on the couch I had vacated when we first heard the noise.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione were at my side in a few moments. I knelt besides the blonde boy and began to undo his tattered robes so I could assess his injuries. His hand was clasped tightly around a scroll of some sort, but I couldn’t even begin to relax his hand to retrieve it. Thankfully Madam Pomfrey had agreed to take me on as an apprentice during the past year. I had learned a lot and made quick work on Malfoy’s injuries. After a thorough diagnosis, I ended up healing three broken ribs, a few internal bruises, a deep gash across his upper right thigh, a sprained ankle, a broken jaw, and a rather bad concussion.

His tremors stopped as soon at the concussion was healed and I managed to force a sleeping draught down his throat. That immediately relaxed him enough to take the scroll from his hand. I handed it over to Harry, not bothering to look at it myself first. Everyone had watched me heal him in absolute silence. Obviously, everyone around me was in complete shock, but what can I say? I’m a natural healer, and it was instinct more than anything else that drove me to act so quickly without any second thoughts.

As Harry stood in front of me reading the rather lengthy scroll, his complexion paled and his eyes grew wide. Hermione, while standing behind him, gasped as she too read the contents of the scroll.

Harry handed off the scroll to Lupin and just stared at Malfoy. The boy he saw unable to kill Dumbledore lay in front of him, pale, weak, and with one hell of a story to tell us all once he woke up. We all knew how Malfoy had begun to lower his wand when the other Death Eaters and Snape had burst into the astronomy that night last year, and since we started receiving the notes from “HBP” I know that I, personally, often wondered what had become of Malfoy after that night. As I gazed into Hermione’s, and then Harry’s, eyes I knew I would be finding the answers in just moments.

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That night in early July changed us all, and probably changed the outcome of the war. The scroll was yet another, and also the last, message from Snape.

He had given up his life to be able to tell Draco (yes, he is now Draco to me, and I will explain in a few moments) the location of headquarters so that he may deliver the last bit of information Snape was able to obtain for us.

From the scroll, we were able to learn how once Snape returned to the Death Eaters, he did all he could to become as close to Voldemort as Bellatrix Lestrange had been. When he disappeared with Draco at Hogwarts, he took Draco to his Muggle home on Spinner’s End and left him there behind innumerable curses and wards. He was still under the Unbreakable Vow with Narcissa since he had promised to keep Draco safe. He lived up to the vow as best he could, which is what allowed Draco to come to us a year after his disappearance.

I spent the week after Draco’s arrival at his bedside, taking care of him and nursing him back to health. He was able to give us very detailed information about Voldemort and his final plans to rid the world of Harry. Apparently, Snape had removed every important memory he had and bottled them for Draco to bring to us.

No longer was Draco a smarmy git who teased and terrorized. He was a reformed man who had been to Hell and back. He told me during that week I acted as his nurse that he had never truly witnessed evil while he was safe at Hogwarts. It wasn’t until that night in the astronomy tower that he was fully aware of the grave he was digging himself. From that moment on, he had regretted everything he had done in his six years at school, and he would make up for it if it was the last thing he ever did.

It’s truly amazing to think about it. All those years we Gryffindors could have sworn on Merlin’s grave that Draco was at his father’s side most of the time. As it turned out, he was fairly sheltered from the inner workings of Voldemort; hence why his attempts to kill Dumbledore during sixth year failed so miserably. Draco really had no idea how to be evil. He knew how to be a grade-A pest, but definitely not how to be a heartless murderer. The day Harry saw Draco crying to Moaning Myrtle should have been the flaming sign that Draco Malfoy wasn’t the one we should fear.

According to Draco and Snape’s memories, the night of Harry’s eighteenth birthday was to be the night Voldemort would make his final attack. We were well prepared that humid summer night. Draco stood side by side with the trio he spent years antagonizing to fight his own family. As a matter of fact, he was the one who killed Lucius. I can honestly say I’ve never been so proud, yet so sad, for another human being.

Hermione and Ron were the brilliant duo who took care of Nagini. Once that great snake had been slain, Voldemort must have felt something. Over the past year and a half, he had never noticed that five of his horcruxes had been destroyed. When his last one outside his body, Nagini, had been taken care of, he nearly crumpled from the shock. That was all Harry needed to take the sword of Godric Gryffindor and plunge it into the space where Voldemort’s heart should have been. Voldemort’s mistake was that he never really had trust in his followers; he had always felt that it was up to him to finish Harry. Harry’s strength was that his undying LOVE for his friends meant that he trusted them to do their job, which left his mind clear to focus on killing the Dark Lord.

During the battle, Draco suffered quite a few nasty wounds from Death Eaters who wanted him to pay for his betrayal. So, yet again, I played nurse to his wounds and brought him back to health.

I started off this tale of sorts with the question of what I want and need most in life. I think, after reflecting on all that has happened in recent history, I finally know the answer.

Draco Malfoy.

Funny how things work out, isn’t it? It’s taken me all these years to finally realize he is the only want and need I have for the rest of my life. I imagine he would be quite happy to hear that, since he’s currently staring at me from the alter at the opposite end of the isle. Oh, how he’s changed. He’s a beautiful man. My old answer, Harry, is there standing next to Draco, my new answer, as his best man. Hermione, my maid of honor, couldn’t look any more beautiful.

This day, two years now since the fall of Voldemort, is the beginning of a new life with my new answer to my old question. Blessed be the Gods who felt I was worthy for this.