Draco paced up in his room, thinking about all that he had heard that day. Many questions had surfaced in his mind during his conversation with Blenkinsop Waterbut, and he didn’t know which ” if any ” he should give voice to. He had so many... He wouldn’t know where to begin. How do you know so much about the Dark Lord? Do you know something even I don’t? Are you really that old? What’s behind that little door you go through every night? What is the Dark Lord really up to? Immortality... Why are you so bitter about living forever?
He suddenly remembered the sad, wistful way Blenkinsop had spoken about how it felt to live forever. The lively sparkle in his eyes when he described Isabelle, the woman he had loved. The anger that had emanated from every fiber of his being when he condemned the Dark Lord’s goal.
Do you wish you had died that day?
That one he would most definitely never ask. In fact, most of the questions he had for the old man ” the very old man, he corrected himself ” seemed forbidden. But... there was one... And he didn’t even have to ask about it.
He could do a bit of spying...
“No,” Draco told himself sternly. “Don’t you even think about it. Blenkinsop’s inn took you in; he even told you almost everything about himself. Don’t ruin his trust like that.”
The last sentence seemed so strange, so utterly foreign to Draco that he stopped his pacing. He walked over to a cracked mirror that hung on the wall and stared at his wide-eyed, pale face. “What is wrong with me?” he wondered aloud. He laughed humorlessly. “Since when have I ever cared about such a trivial thing as trust? I’ve always done what I wanted, no matter what anyone else said... So why should I start caring now?”
He knew the reason why. Somewhere, along that deserted road, he had lost everything that made up the old Draco Malfoy. He had lost himself. He’d become this quiet, meek, delicate person who trusted and listened to people. A person that he didn’t even recognize. He wondered where his old self had gone: the loud, arrogant, sneering Draco who didn’t give a damn what the world thought of him. The change was both frightening and thrilling. He missed his old self, which had given his fragile soul the shelter it needed from the world’s cruelty. And yet, at the same time, he was glad to be so open to others. He felt more like the boy he’d been meant to be.
The trust issue was a tricky thing to get his mind around, so Draco moved on to another matter: consequences. Really, what difference would it truly make if he did choose to sneak downstairs and see what lay beyond that door? The worst Blenkinsop could do was kick him out of the inn, wasn’t it? He seemed to be such a harmless old man. But that bartender, Andrew... Draco imagined that the muscle-bound man could do quite a bit of damage.
Curiosity, however, tugged too strongly at the edges of his mind for him to think much about trust or consequences. “I’ll go down and ask him about it first,” he told his reflection decidedly. “Then, if I can’t find him or he’s busy or something, I’ll have a look myself. Can’t say I didn’t try, then.”
“A fine decision, young man.” a deep, gravelly voice suddenly issued out of the cracked mirror, startling Draco half to death. He jumped back and stared at it warily as it continued, “I like having people in here who know how to make up their minds. Sign of good character. You go out that door and stick by it. Oh, and your hair’s a bit mussed in the front.”
“Ah,” said Draco faintly. He reached up and mechanically smoothed back the offending hairs.
“Yes, that’s it,” the deep voice said approvingly. It then fell silent, but Draco got the impression that if it had had a face, it would be winking conspiratorially at him. It seemed just that sort of mirror.
Draco hurried out the door without sparing another thought for the mirror, whose gravelly chuckle followed him down the long corridor before finally fading away. Draco shook his head as he descended the spiraling staircase. Talking magic mirrors in a magic inn... I suppose I really shouldn’t be surprised...
In what felt like no time at all, he was sitting back in his chair, pretending to read some Muggle magazine that someone ” Both Muggles and wizards must come in here, he thought with mild surprise ” had brought in. But all the while he was really peering over the top to look around the tavern, watching for Blenkinsop Waterbut. He sat there for about ten minutes without catching any sign of the old man. Then, however, he caught a glimpse of gray hair at a table that he knew for a fact was the territory of a young woman with pale hair and a scar running down the side of her face.
Draco stretched his neck a bit further over the magazine and saw that Blenkinsop was indeed hunched over at the table, carrying on a hushed conversation with the woman who sat across from him. Their positions reminded Draco very much of his talk with Blenkinsop earlier that day.
He’s too busy, Draco thought. His heart began to sink, until he realized that had been one of the conditions he had placed himself under. Blenkinsop is busy, so I can try and slip in through that door.
He turned his head to watch Andrew, the barkeeper. He seemed to be busying himself by filling a glass for a customer. The glass was slowly filling with a sluggish green drink that oozed like mud and made Draco nauseous just to look at it. He narrowed his eyes to stare into Andrew’s face. The man had his back to the little corner.
Perfect.
Draco’s time had come. He casually stood up and made as if to head back up the steps. He felt the bartender’s eyes on him, and walked all the way to the staircase to lightly place his hand on the railing. His heart was pounding heavily as he turned his head a few inches to watch the bar out the corner of his eye.
In his peripheral vision he could see that Andrew was satisfied that Draco was really going upstairs, and had unsuspectingly gone back to filling the glass.
Whew. Draco got down on all fours and skidded across the floor until he reached the door in the corner. As he grabbed ahold of the doorknob, he glanced over his shoulder to check if anyone had seen him. Blenkinsop was still talking with the girl, unaware of Draco’s deception. The other people clustered around their own tables were too enveloped in their problems to tell on him, if they’d seen him at all. And the two men at the bar were now chatting amiably together. It seemed to Draco that the ones at the bar must be in better shape than the others. Either that, or they were too drunk to think about the reasons they were in here in the first place ” though, somehow, Draco suspected that the Green Dragon didn’t allow its guests to drown their sorrows like other taverns.
Not giving himself another moment to hesitate, Draco turned the doorknob and slipped into a dark room, letting the door softly swing shut behind him.
The room was pitch-black. Draco couldn’t see his hand when he held it in front of his face. He fumbled about in the dark for a while before pulling his wand out of his robes pocket and whispering, “Lumos.”
The tip of his wand glowed with a soft inner light, illuminating Draco and part of the room he was in. He raised the wand higher and looked around interestedly. The room was small and square-shaped, with a plain trundle bed in the corner and a short dresser crammed into the corner beside it. There was a desk and a single chair in the corner opposite the bed. Those were the only pieces of furniture in the room; all in all, it was much plainer than the inn’s own public rooms.
But it wasn’t the furnishings that caught Draco’s attention. His eyes were immediately drawn to the long wall opposite to the door. The entire wall was completely covered with pictures. Big, small, tall, long, rectangular, round, moving photographs hung all over the wall. Draco stared in awe; he had never seen anything like it. Hogwarts had nothing compared to this. Each picture was accompanied by its own frame. People looked out from the frames, not moving to visit each other, as the portraits did in Hogwarts, but sticking obstinately in their own places. That was the first strange thing Draco noticed about the wall.
The second strange thing was that there seemed to be an invisible line running down the middle of the wall, dividing the photographs into two sections. On the right, all the people were happy and smiling at the camera, with the same look of subdued ecstasy on their faces as that which Draco had seen on Francis Dupont’s. But then on the left, in stark contrast with the right side, the people looked sad and depressed, mournful-looking even as several of them attempted obviously forced smiles. Most, however, didn’t even bother pretending, instead staring bleakly out from their frames as if the world had ended a day earlier than expected.
Draco was inspecting a photograph that had been hung near the bed when he noticed a lone picture frame standing on top of the dresser. He tried to ignore it, but curiosity once again got the better of him. He went over to have a look at the person inside.
To his surprise, that person was a pretty young woman with long, copper-colored hair and big blue eyes. As he watched, she spun around in a circle with a smile on her lips, laughing at some joke that only she could hear. The woman had a soft, tinkling laugh that was almost musical.
So involved in the picture was Draco that he was totally unaware of Blenkinsop’s presence in the room until the old man said quietly, “She was beautiful, wasn’t she?”
Draco started and accidentally extinguished his wand. The two were left in the darkness for a few long minutes before Blenkinsop walked away and silently lit a lamp, whose bright glow soon it up the whole room.
Blenkinsop turned to look at Draco with a carefully blank expression on his face. Draco’s guilty conscience couldn’t help but think that it was an accusing look, and he struggled for an excuse. “I, er, I wanted to find you, sir, and I thought... well... I’m sorry I intruded, sir,” he finished pathetically.
Blenkinsop didn’t seem to hear him. He reached over to pick up the picture frame and gazed at it with unveiled affection. “Isabelle,” he explained. “Beautiful, wasn’t she?”
“Yeah, she was,” Draco said politely. He personally thought he had seen many women much better-looking than Isabelle ” his own mother, for one ” but knew it would be very unfair to say so. She was quite beautiful, in her own way... “Um, I’m sorry I came in without your permission, Blenkinsop,” he added again, just to be on the safe side.
The old man smiled slightly and waved away the apology. “No, no, in this case I am sure curiosity is entirely at fault.” He carefully set down the picture of Isabelle and with his other hand gestured toward the wall of photographs. “So, what do you think of my Wall of Sheep?”
“Huh?” Draco said stupidly, staring goggle-eyed at Blenkinsop. What’s that supposed to mean?
“I privately call it my ‘Wall of Sheep.’ I am like a shepherd guiding my ‘sheep’ ” the guests of this inn ” to a safehaven. Their sanctuary. I have taken a picture of every single person who has ever walked through the Green Dragon’s doors and displayed them on this wall. My failures” ” he motioned towards the left-hand side of the wall ” “and my successes.” Here he pointed to the right. “I’ve had them in equal measure. Some guests I have not been able to help, and that always feels like I have failed in my mission in some way. But then there comes along someone I can help, and they almost make up for the ones I couldn’t do anything for.” Blenkinsop paused. “That’s just like life.
“I’m not here to preach to you, Draco, and I don’t want to. But you have to realize that sometimes in life there are downs. Times when you feel that you’ve hit rock-bottom, and that there is no way you will ever rise up again. But there are ups, too. And more often than not they are pure and good enough to outweigh the bad. Those are the times that make life worth living.” Blenkinsop looked sad for a moment. “Unfortunately, not everyone realizes that in time.”
Draco looked around at all the pictures again. Happy, smiling faces were the neighbors of lonely, desolate faces. It was easy to see who had received Blenkinsop’s message before their departure ” and who hadn’t.
For several minutes, he watched the photos, and Blenkinsop watched him. They were both quiet; Draco was thinking. He had heard and seen a lot in the past two days, but he wasn’t sure what he thought of it all. Blenkinsop has spent most of his life helping others, but up until now I’ve only ever cared about myself. What I had, what I didn’t have, what others thought about me, what I thought about them as compared to me... I’m the most selfish person in the world, standing beside the most selfless person the world has ever seen. And I worry about what I am going to do? I’ve had a very easy life compared to most of these people... I’m sure if I just thought about my position logically, from another person’s point of view, I would be able to come up with a solution.
And just like that, he knew.
Draco knew exactly what he had to do. How could I have been so blind?
Blenkinsop must have seen the dawning comprehension on Draco’s face, because he smiled. “I think my work here is done,” he said softly. “You take care of yourself, Draco.”
Draco was suddenly overcome with an enormous rush of gratitude towards Blenkinsop. He flung his arms around the old man, surprising himself and Blenkinsop, who stiffened, then relaxed with a chuckle. “Yes, I’ve done more than enough,” he murmured.
Draco released Blenkinsop and gave him a small smile. “Thank you,” he said simply.
“Go in peace,” the elderly man said ceremoniously; then he broke into a wide grin. “Be careful out there, lad.”
“Thank you,” Draco repeated. He walked over to the door and hesitated, turning back to look into Blenkinsop’s face one last time.
A flash of light suddenly and unexpectedly blinded him, and he blinked several times to get rid of the spots that floated in his vision even after the light faded. When he could finally see again, he saw Blenkinsop, holding a large camera in his hands and grinning. He held up the device. “Couldn’t let you be the only one to get away without a picture, now could I?”
Draco then walked out the door and out of the inn without looking back.
Blenkinsop Waterbut was left alone in his room, staring after the young man with the white-blond hair. After a moment, he looked down at the camera in his hand and chuckled to himself as he bounced it once or twice in his palm. “There goes one more sheep for the good,” he muttered. He picked up the picture of Isabelle and looked down at her. “I think you would have liked him, Belle.”
It had all been so obvious. The Order would never just shoot and ask questions later; that was what the Death Eaters did. They would capture, certainly, but they never cursed an enemy who arrived before them willing, unarmed, and alone.
Draco knew that was where he had to go, as he headed down the dusty road, away from the Green Dragon Inn. He would go to the Order of the Phoenix and beg sanctuary from them. He would tell them everything about the Dark Lord and his cronies, and hang the consequences. He would gain the Order’s trust and fight, as Dumbledore had always done, on the side of good. He knew that might mean having to fight his own parents, but if it came to that, then so be it.
It was the right thing to do.
Draco turned around, when he had gone a few steps, for one last look at the inn that had welcomed him like a home. But it was already gone, disappeared into the fog of memory.
Taking a deep breath, and sending one last thank-you to Blenkinsop Waterbut, Draco Malfoy turned to face his destiny.
Twenty years later, a man with shoulder-length blond hair and a matching goatee walked down an abandoned street. His black robes were battered and worn, as was the wand he held in his limp right hand. But all this mattered little to the man. He was too busy concentrating to care about his condition.
A large brick building suddenly appeared in front of the man, but he didn't seem at all surprised. The sign that swung from the door depicted a faded dragon whose long green tail sinuously twisted around beneath it to form the words “The Green Dragon: Est. 1683.”
The man’s mood suddenly lifted, and a smiled stretched across his face as he reached forward and opened the heavy wooden door that hid the familiar scene of a tavern.
An old man with one green eye and one blue caught his attention as he entered, and greeted him warmly. “Welcome back, Draco Malfoy.
"Welcome home."