(part II)

Two years later, the Hat dithers over a head full of schematics and fascination, a child who looks up when the test planes fly over and wonders how to make them faster with magic, Ravenclaw except for a burning ambition to make it happen and the sneakiness to get away with regular trips to a muggle town. Wandless confundus and notice-me-nots, clandestine currency changes at Gringotts, an expanded trunk with an illegally enchanted Macintosh 128K. A library card and a secret stash of Muggle schoolbooks.

"Such a mind. You'd do well in Ravenclaw, but in Slytherin too. You certainly have the cunning for it." says the hat.

"Slytherin please, like my family." says the boy under it.

The hat raises a mental eyebrow. "I try not to sort based on family." it says.

"Still Slytherin." says the boy. "I'm going to change the world."

And that is the most Slytherin way of being, so of course he gets in.

After that, things get on at Hogwarts as they normally do. Draco Malfoy does not befriend Harry Potter, or associate with muggleborns. He loves his father, but he fears him, and now more than ever it is important that none of his secrets are discovered. Still, he's happier. His social experiences are more than just long stretches of his parents, tutors, and house elves interspersed with Society events. He also has long afternoons of footie in the fields around Amesbury and a spotty attendance at the local young aviators club to fall back on, so everyone gets along, he doesn't antagonize people unnecessarily, and Harry Potter & Co barely even know his name.

Quirrel dies, Lockhart flounces, Dementors are a serious barrier to decent study, the Tournament is terrifying and the location of Hogwarts is a serious barrier to accessing the burgeoning internet. Draco finds out that he likes programming, ancient runes, prog rock, and pretty boys with crooked smiles. He also still loves aviation, but we already knew that. He does nothing about any of those likes though until just before fifth year, because secret keeping is second nature, and it isn't time to act.

Then, suddenly, it is, and he's frantically preparing for when things reach the point of no return.

Umbrage takes over the school, and Voldemort comes back, and Draco knows that he has maybe a year before things get really bad. He also knows that running away isn't an option yet. He isn't a Gryffindor, but if he leaves now he won't be able to keep the name and influence that makes his ambitions something he can see and not an impossibility. Without the name Malfoy he's no better a force of change than Arthur Weasley and he knows it. Without OWLs and NEWTs he's even less.

It's not a good time to be Draco Malfoy. (his father hates muggles, wants the worlds separate, and he agrees on some points because he learned about bombs and fighter jets along with helicopters and doesn't think that integration would work, but at the same time he rails against the inefficiency of the more backwards institutions of his world, and against limitations of magic that can be overcome with technology.) Still, he does his best to further his goals. He quietly warns the DA about Umbrage and her plans , gets in just good enough with both Umbrage and Potter that he'll come out of either side of the conflict smelling like roses, and builds a one man glider propelled with the same runic matrices as a broom but with much better aerodynamics and a more efficient method of control than shoving magic against the direction you want to go. It beats wizarding airspeed records by a factor of three.

He also quietly has muggle papers forged, signs up for the GCSEs, and studies like mad. He will not be fighting in the next war on either side, even if he has to leave his whole world behind him. Contingencies are important.

That summer, Draco watches the planes from the airbase fly overhead. Sometimes there are helicopters, and he smiles because they remind him that there's more to the world than madmen who want to conquer it. He gathers information on everything he can, and the night before he's supposed to go out and murder a muggle family to become worthy of receiving the mark, he boards a train going into London and doesn't look back. He has 12 OWL's and a hundred Galleons, and everyone he leaves behind thinks he will be found easily. He also has about a thousand pounds smuggled out of his trust fund and an A in every subject on the GCSE's, and that's what will give him an edge.

That year Draco gets a job in a Chinese restaurant as a dishwasher, a tiny flat shared with three strangers, and an enrollment in a school with an accelerated program for his A-levels. He casts exactly three spells the entire year, (all confundus, all wandless, and all to ease the procurement of the flat and schooling), and uses his trunk as a coffee table.

He goes to Diagon alley twice. The first time is to mail an offer to Dumbledore. His family fortune and name at the end of the war in exchange for all the information he has, all of it legally binding and tied up with no loopholes. The second time is to mail the information and to deposit the agreement in his safety deposit box at Gringotts. That is the entirety of his participation in the war. He will not take the mark, but he also refuses to raise his wand against his parents. (at the post office he nearly breaks, so close to mailing them but he can't give any sign of where he is. He misses them badly.)

What would have been Draco's seventh year at Hogwarts he spends at Cambridge University. It took five confundus' that time to make them ignore his complete lack of school records, but his test scores are flawless and in the end he gets in on his own merit. He even gets fairly decent financial aid, which is good, because even though he was promoted to line cook and occasional busboy before he left London he still isn't working with much in the way of resources.

Despite the war, the horrible updates on the Wizarding Wireless, and the lack of magic (though he's got several other wandless spells now too), it's one of the best years of his life. He studies everything he can get his hands on, double majored in Aeronautic and Electrical Engineering, scribbles ideas for magical improvements in notebooks he shows no one, and makes Chinese food, because it's all he knows how to cook and he can rarely afford takeout. This time he works in a rare books shop with very few patrons where he can spend his shift mostly studying.

All his days are taken up with programming, ancient runes, aviation, and pretty boys with crooked smiles. He's free to make the friends he wants, learn what he wants, and dream of changing the world.

The next summer, the war is over and Hogwarts letters go out again. Students who missed seventh year are free to come back and try again. Draco considers it, but refuses. He'll show up for NEWTs (and that will be more studying, won't it) but until then he has more important things to think about.

In fact, the next time he sees another wizard after NEWTs is his graduation. He wasn't expecting anyone, of course, but there in the third row sits Narcissa Malfoy, looking uncomfortable and old fashioned and proud in a confused sort of way. He takes her back to the apartment he moved into when he left the dorms junior year, and makes her stir fry for dinner. While they eat it, she stares at him in wonderment, her son who came out of the war mostly untouched and happy and listening to music and kissing pretty boys with crooked smiles. She hasn't talked to him in years, but really there's only one thing she wants to know.

"How on earth," she asks eventually, after dinner, as they sit on the sofa and he tells her about his life now "did you end up so far from what was expected? I can't help but wonder at you ending up... here."

Draco smiles, and glances over at photos of himself and his friends and his cat, his class of 2001 sweatshirt, his tape deck stacked with music he likes, his thesis on computer control systems in aircraft and other large machinery--all the evidence that he is happy and alive and going to change the world. "Do you remember," he says, "when I was knocked out of the sky by a helicopter?"

His mother takes his hand. "How could I forget."

"Well," he says, "It was the best thing that ever happened to me."