Author’s Note: I tried three or four titles for this (It’s a Long Way Down being the runner-up to Sum of My Sins…), and it actually took longer to pick a title than it did to write the story, which is a one-shot, taking place several months after Dumbledore’s death. It was really just an idea I was tinkering around with and decided to write down. And I never, as a rule, write in the present tense...this may be why...

The Sum of My Sins
The Transgressions of Draco Malfoy

The waxing moon, three-quarters full, creeps up over the rooftops, lending its eerie glow to a sleeping city. The pale, gray eyes of a young man, not more than seventeen years of age, track its course. His breath comes in frosty, ragged bursts and each exhalation taxes him greatly, for months on the lam have already taken their toll.

Five months, he counts them out on the bumps and dents of his bony knuckles, as he did when he was young: June, July, August, September, October. Thirty days hath September…The familiar, singsong words offer but a moment’s consolation. This sweet comfort cannot last, for tonight Draco Malfoy has reached the end of his rope.

He sits on the fire escape, letting his legs dangle over the piles of refuse in the street far below. A cacophony of sirens rises from the very heart of the city, an appropriately jarring chorus to the thoughts churning in his head. He rolls back his sleeves to reveal the marks of his bondage; his left arm bears the unmistakable marks of a gruesome attack; his right is seared with a Death Eater’s brand. Momentarily, he marvels at it – dark and sinister against his starkly white skin, but then the memories return…

He remembers how the opaline necklace, wrought from Darkest magic, felt in these hands of his. A rush of power overcame him, as his fingers caressed the silver coils through gloves of thickest dragonhide. He turned slowly to face his unwitting middleman; he was intoxicated with his own Unforgivable actions.

His pale, pointed face flushes with embarrassment as he recalls his most desperate hour and the bemused face of Harry Potter - intruder on his private grief - swims before his weary eyes.

"Don't," crooned Moaning Myrtle's voice from one of the cubicles. "Don't... tell me what's wrong... I can help you..."

"No one can help me,” he said. His whole body was shaking. "I can't do it... I can't... It won't work... and unless I do it soon... he says he'll kill me..."

He lifted his head to see Harry Potter’s reflection in the cracked bathroom mirror.

“Cruci—” he began, but Potter was faster.

“Sectumspectra!”

The pain unfelt. His scream unheard. Blood and water mingling on the flagstone floor. Myrtle’s hysterical shrieks echoing in his ears: “MURDER! MURDER!”

He realizes that there is no one to weep over him now. Lord Voldemort has seen to that…

Yet even now, despite it all, his embittered soul swells with pride as he recalls the night of his triumph. Giving his wand a final wave, he stepped back to admire his handiwork. As he watched, the cabinet began to tick; he could hear its innards clinking together. Each chink of metal on metal sounded like a heartbeat – this, he ensured himself, was the moment of his salvation…the machinery for an attack on Hogwarts was finally in place.

Suddenly, his heart clenches in pain and his hands begin to tremble…

He threw himself against the door (“Alohomora!”) and stumbled out onto the moonlit ramparts. “Expelliarmus!” He imagined the incantation echoing down from the lightning-struck tower and across the grounds, to the distant lair of Lord Voldemort. But any visions of eternal glory, of safety for his family, faded away as his quarry spoke. The wand in Draco’s hands had trembled, then lowered in defeat. He was not a killer.

“I appreciate the difficulty of your position. I can help you... Draco, you are not a killer. Let us have no more pretence about that…It is my mercy, not yours, that matters now.”

But his last chance for amnesty was brutally snatched away. And tonight, Severus Snape, his great protector, has turned him away. The barrage of memories careens to a stop and Draco Malfoy struggles to stand, seeking firm footing as the fire escape clanks and jangles beneath him. Kings Cross Station glitters like a beacon on the distant horizon and he realizes where he must go. He has nothing left to lose.

Hogwarts is beckoning.