Draco's PoV.:

In his youth and long into adulthood, Draco had never witnessed a truly comfortable silence. Silence between friends always either seemed awkward or misplaced or simply like a waste of time. There were moments, of course, when silence was a blessing, like those moments when you tried to sleep and nothing, not even a quiet snore, disturbed you, or when you read a good book. But those silences were never truly silent either.

The silences Draco remembered where full of loaded thoughts, strings of stories connecting in his head, a constant thread of 'Pottah' keeping him awake.

When Draco blinked open his eyes, there was nothing. Not a single sound around him nor inside his mind.

It was pure white, pure light that didn't even blind him. And then there was the fact that he was naked. Draco trailed his arms, searching for scars but found not even the Dark Mark as witness to the errors in his life. It was clean and white skin that looked back at him, innocent and pure. For once, Draco didn't think it was a problem.

He was at peace.

"Ah." Draco let out quietly. "I'm dead."

Around him, the world began to thicken, closing him in into a slightly darker space. There was no ceiling, only walls building around him, shutting him in. That was good. Draco had always felt more comfortable inside. The walls painted in white, much cleaner than he remembered, glass windows dust and spiderweb free.

A counter grew out of nothing, a small microwave finding its place there, a first reminder of a place Draco hadn't forgotten, yet rarely remembered. Then a desk appeared alongside a bookshelf with nameless covers. Draco moved along the rows of books, pulled some out and found the pages empty. Empty of words, not of the feelings they had given him. One of them made a tear slip down his skin and fall onto the wooden floor, telling him exactly which book this was. He didn't remember its name, but he remembered it teaching him who he was. That it was okay who he was.

Draco closed the book shut. He knew where he was, but he didn't know how he'd gotten here. From where he stood now, he could see the letters shining through the milky glass of his office door: Dr D. Malfoy. Therapist

A knock interrupted his thoughts, surprising him. "Just one moment." Draco said and frantically searched for a piece of clothing. He found something hanging off his office chair. A used one he'd found on ebay, where the soft cushions were already sat through when he'd bought it. This one looked comfortable but new. Draco put on the silken – bathrobe – one might call it. "You may enter." He wrapped the cloth around him and sat down on his chair, hoping to be decent enough for whoever would come in.

The milky door already revealed a familiar frame, when the doorknob was turned and a female figure appeared.

Draco blinked in surprise at the familiar, yet somehow unexpected face.

His secretary was about as tall as himself, maybe in her late thirties or early forties. Her brown hair was tied in a small bun and only a few strands surrounded her round face. Clutched in her arms was a file, almost as thick as a small book.

Sarah Wilburth had entered his office with a gentle smile. "You have an appointment."

Draco raised his brow. "I have to work once I'm dead?"

The words brought forth the memories of his final moments in that forest. Desperation and coldness clutching at his heart, as desperation had forced him to his knees. Draco had lost his soul. But this couldn't be the stomach of a dementor, could it?

"You are the client." Sarah said, not waiting, never waiting for him to call her in. She grabbed the stool that had formed before his desk and sat down.

"Me?" Draco blinked in surprise but watched her with fascination as she pulled out her reading glasses and began to skip through the file, that – as Draco could now see – had his name on it. "Hold on, if I'm dead, then why are you here? You should still be alive!" He couldn't have changed the future that much, right?

"This place, Draco, has little to do with time, believe me. And in the end, everyone dies eventually. I'm here because it was I you wanted to see." There was a mysterious but playful way with which she said the most ominous shit. Like back when she'd explained the functions of the hamster microwave to him.

So, anyone could have come here. Why was it her, Draco wondered, but didn't wonder for long. "Where is here, exactly? I know this is my office, but why am I in my office?"

"You're in a state between life and death," Sarah explained. "This –," she pointed around, "is a crossroad. Everyone has one. Everyone has a different one. Technically, I can't see what it looks like for you, but somehow, it doesn't surprise me that you chose your office. This is the place where you decided to change."

Right. Harry had mention something about crossroads, hadn't he?

She stopped at something in her notes, then held her finger to it and looked up. "You've done well, Draco."

It was as if her words caught directly on his soul and Draco shuddered down a surprisingly shaky breath. He wanted to say something, wanted to question her further, but if this place was a crossroad – "Does that mean I can come back to life if I want to?" Harry had been able to come back, hadn't he? Did that mean, so could Draco?

"Of course." Sarah said, but then her frown fell. "Although for you, this won't be that simple."

"Huh?" Draco sat up straight. "What does that mean?"

"You have lived two lives, Draco. There is the world where you weren't able to change anything, and then there is the one where you helped save it." She put down the file and put her chin on her hands. "You will have to choose one."

Draco startled. "You mean – I have a choice?" The future, his old time, or the new one? Timeline A vs Timeline B?

"Yes." Sarah's mouth twitched into an even brighter smile. "But how about we put this aside for now. You are here as a client; we should talk about that for a bit."

Draco blinked. "You mentioned that. What do you mean, client? Am I supposed to diagnose myself?" Draco didn't fail to notice that he was the one sitting in the therapist's chair, while she sat on the client's one. Was that on purpose or did it not mean anything in the greater scheme of things?

Sarah just stared at him for a moment, patient, almost as annoyingly patient as Dumbledore had been. "You already have your diagnosis, Draco. You've had it before you left, and you've noticed every change that happened after. Your panic attacks, your trust issues, your depression, your suicidal tendencies. You know about all of it. You don't deny it." She paused, her smile falling a bit. "But you should talk about it for a change."

Draco watched her, not sure whether to trust this situation, but if he was already dead, then what was the point. "Those are just typical responses to being tortured," he said, justifying himself.

"It wasn't just torture."

Draco bit his lip, trying not to sound too frustrated. "No. It was everything." He paused, a sadness overcoming him that was strangely soothed by his surroundings. "It feels like everything I try, backfires or costs too much." He laughed humorlessly. "I choose my friends and pay with fascism, manipulation and years of torture. I pay with their lives, not my own. I turn back in time and try to make better choices and pay for it with more torture, with more lives. Just different ones. It feels like I chose who died in this war." A lump had formed in his throat, making it impossible to speak. "I choose to trust someone and they betray me. They choose to trust me and suffer for it."

Sarah moved out her hand to squeeze his hand in an attempt at comfort.

"Sometimes I wonder whether it would have been better had I not done anything at all." He closed his eyes.

"Would it be?" Sarah asked gently, looking up to him from her lowered position, distanced only by that desk.

For a moment, Draco wondered what she was saying. What she was implying. It sounded like this world had profited from his help. But had it really? Neville was dead. His mother was dead. Other students had died. One of his oldest friends had been tortured. "I don't know." He hadn't seen the full extent of the consequences of his actions. Had only witnessed little of it, as he had been too busy fighting with Potter. It felt liked it always had. No matter what choice he made, people suffered and died. It was still terrible, even though evil would still have been defeated. Perhaps there was no better or worse. Perhaps all his decisions ended up the same. Would always end up the same.

He shook his head, not wanting to think about any of this anymore, to say it out loud. "May I ask you something?" His voice was quiet, but she heard him clearly. He wanted to deflect, to take some time to think of something else. And her expression, her kindness, her existence in this very room, it made him pause and brought a question to the surface he hadn't dared pose before.

"Of course."

"When I was at the ministry –"

"You want to ask about the prophecy."

"Yes." Draco nodded. "It makes no sense. You were supposed to be a muggle." It occurred to Draco that if that were the case, then she should be much more shocked by his file than she truly was. That, or the file was empty. Draco had no idea. Perhaps it was like with the books, only feelings. Or, after death, people learned to live together even without magic. How would he know?

"Ah. That." Sarah leaned back in her chair, crossing her legs. "I'm not."

"I figured as much." Draco said. "Why did you never tell me? I thought I was the only wizard who worked in therapy."

"You misunderstand." Sarah stared at the nonexistent ceiling. Perhaps her own visions after death were different than his. "I am not a witch either."

"No?" Draco sat up, curious beyond his normal curiosity.

"I am a squib." She grinned. "You held a whole class about my kind, so you should understand what I mean when I say that I'm on the spectrum." She paused, allowing her words to settle on Draco's mind. "I am one of the kinds that can only work with one type of magic." Draco knew of that of course. There were some squibs who had some levels of magical power, but only for one thing. It could be only about a common spell, like a light spell, or in some rare cases, a powerful or advanced one, like amnesia spells. It was really strange how that worked.

"Really?" Draco leaned forward curiously. "What kind?"

Her grin widened and crinkled at the corners of her mouth. "Haven't you guessed it yet?" There was a bit of suspense, of expectation, when she finally answered. "Time magic."

Draco blinked several times. "But that's –." He blinked. "An advanced spell?" Advanced – that was a low term for what that implied.

"That's the prejudice, isn't it?" She laughed, sounding a little disheartened. "As a squib, I was never able to use a wand properly. I was often sent to Saint Mungo's hospital for my attacks. Prophecies." She added the last word at Draco's questioning frown. "It's how I was discovered."

"Discovered?" Draco blinked.

Then, her smile widened just a tad bit more. "By the ministry of magic. There is a room inside the ministry that deals entirely with the inner workings of time. And I was chosen to become an Unspeakable." As Draco gaped at her, Sarah laughed a little. "I was safe there for a while. Unspeakables don't have to speak about their work, nor their abilities. And my ability helped building the whole section about time. The time turners, the prophecies, theories about dimensions and time travel. The rules about time travel. I was involved with all of these things.
At the ministry, I was able to discover the true potential of my magic. That was, until Harry Potter and his friends destroyed my time turners and all the prophecies I had helped catalogue." She sighed. "When I had the prophecy about the ferret and the stag, I knew it must have something to do with Harry Potter himself, because of his Patronus. Either that, or his father. The ferret was harder to find." She smiled at him. "Lots of my work was destroyed in the war and my name scratched from the records. I was a squib, and Voldemort didn't take well to my kind. So, I left, and I hid upon Muggles. And then, I saw you."

"Me?"

"I saw the ferret, clear as day, working as a therapist in a small Muggle town. I got hired, about a year before you arrived, and then we worked together for a while. It took me a lot of digging and research to find out who you were and why you were there. And then, when the time came – I sent you back in time."

The silence that stretched between them felt heavier than before. "That was you." Draco blinked. Somehow, he hadn't expected to ever find the answer to that question. And yet, he found himself more startled than surprised.

"Are you mad?" She looked back down, only mildly guilty.

"Why did you do it?" he asked, unsure of what else to respond.

She took a moment to consider. "You were broken." She said. "Not because of what happened to you, but because you refused to deal with it. You helped so many people, never understanding how much it meant for them. But you refused to face your own past, when you kept telling them to do so. We somehow became friends after a while. You accepted me, you never asked too many questions, you were kind. I wanted to give you the chance to change your fate. To face your demons. To find out whether or not you could have done anything to make it better. I wanted you to see that you tried your best. And that it was enough." She paused. "It was always enough."

A stray tear slid from Draco's eye, unbidden and unexpected, as if his feelings were raw here and uncontrolled. Somehow, he wasn't angry. Somehow, it made his heart swell with a mix of longing and pain. "Well, I tried."

"I know." She looked guilty, almost regretful.

"But I don't understand – even if all that is true – why can I now choose which world to live in? Why can I die and choose to live? I'm not Harry Potter."

At that, Sarah chuckled and pitifully shook her head. "Oh, there are so many things the wizarding world has yet to discover. Some questions are answered only in death. But this one, I can explain."

"Can you?" Draco felt a bit skeptical about this.

"Yes." She sighed a little. "The answer to all your questions regarding this time travel lie in the nature of your soul."

"My soul?"

She chuckled a bit at his expression but continued undeterred. "Some souls are chosen by time itself and are therefore tied to their timeline.

The prophecies don't have to always have to do with time travel like in your case, but you're certainly not the first. You should have heard by now, that St. Mungo's had cases of wizards who have never woken up and failed to keep them alive."

Draco's eyes went wide. "You're saying, they were time travelers too?"

"Yes. And most of them chose to live in the timeline they'd changed." She smiled wistfully. "Every prophecy inside the ministry is about a person. And whoever that person is, cannot die until their prophecies are fulfilled. In exchange for that, they earn a second life. It is a bit more complicated than that and hard to explain. Some of it has to do with love as a source of power. All I can tell you is that some prophecies do not come to pass because they are inactive in this dimension. There are ways to determine which ones are active and which aren't, but it took me over a decade to find out how." She hummed a little, lost in thoughts that Draco had no access to. "And before you ask your question about Potter, you might want to look out the window."

Draco blinked and turned his head. The window was blocked by blinds, but he could see light shining through into the room, painting the grayish walls a littler lighter in its direct path.

Draco got up, ignoring his own attire and walked over. He pushed his fingers between the blinds and parted it to spy outside. To his surprise, he saw King's Cross station. "What?" He paused. "I can see – Is that Potter's crossroad?" Somehow, his surprise softened quickly. "He told me about it," he vaguely remembered. He moved his head to her. "Why can I see it?"

She didn't meet his gaze. "For the same reason he followed you back in time. Your souls are connected."

"Really?" A bitter feeling gnawed at Draco's insides. "I don't feel very connected to him right now."

"He hurt you. That always results in distance."

Draco's lips quivered. "Yes."

She didn't say anything, she waited for him to speak, let him sort out his thoughts. "Did you think Potter's mother was the only mother who died for her child?" She paused again, watching him take that in. "Do you think if it were that simple, Voldemort wouldn't have failed to kill children far more often? Love is what broke his soul apart, but it's not what kept Potter alive. It is not what made him a hero. You are both tied by destiny, you are no better or worse than him. He's no more hero than you are."

Draco waited, until he figured that he was supposed to answer that. And it was in this pause that he understood that this too was part of his therapy. An elaborate tale, an explanation that brought him back to his pain, his unaddressed trauma. "He's always been the hero. He's always been so far away. And then-" He paused. "I finally reached him, and I realized that he's broken too." Deep down, Draco had known that they weren't so different. But it was a fact he didn't want to acknowledge.

"Did you think he could fix you?"

"No. I thought I would break him." Draco responded. "And I was right, wasn't I?" There was another pause, in which Draco felt anger crawling up his neck. "Everyone always called him perfect, the savior of our generation. But he had so much help. So many people risked their lives for his. So many people trusted him." He paused again, swallowing around the pain in his throat. "But he's the one who cursed me, because he was trying out a stupid spell he read in a random book that said 'for enemies'." Draco balled his hands to fists, not sure whether he was angry or in pain. "He's the one who cursed me with an imperius because he didn't trust that I could help." He closed his eyes. "He's always been as broken as I was."

"Then how did you break him?" Asked Sarah, her eyes still glued to his.

"He was fine before he met me. He was strong and courageous and then he followed me back in time and was afraid to lose everything."

"That was not your choice. It was his. His younger self died for you. And his older self wanted to help you." She asked again, noticing that he was avoiding the subject.

"I allowed him to fall in love with me." Draco said coldly, finally answering the question, feeling pain despite the comfort of his office. The longer he was here, the more details the room regained. In some corner above the sink were even the pink splashes that Sarah had put there when she'd colored his hair for a prank. The stains had never washed out.

"I see." Sarah stopped, then suddenly stood. She walked towards him slowly, opening the blinds entirely to flood the room in Potter's light. Her expression remained blank. "What makes you think that loving you can break people?"

Draco stopped his trail of thoughts. "I – I don't know."

"I think you do." She said, waiting for him to piece it together.

"I really don't."

"No, you just don't want to think about it. What did you think when you saw your dead mother. Your dead friend?"

Draco felt faint, felt himself swaying with the choking emotion. Right. This place made it so easy to give in to comfort and warmth. It made it easy to forget the faces, the blood and the pain. "That it was my fault."

"Why?"

"Because I left her behind." He referred to his mother and tears trailed down his cheek. "Because I sent Neville to bear my burden. Because –" He closed his eyes. "My parents followed Voldemort to protect me."

"No." Sarah said, smothering Draco in her disagreement. "Why do you blame yourself? Why do you truly believe that this was your actions? That you had any control over it? What made you think you're the one responsible."

"I am. Those were my choices."

"They were theirs too. Why are YOU to blame? Even when you did nothing, couldn't do anything, why is it your fault?"

Draco inhaled a shallow breath, panting slightly, his entire being trembling. It came unbidden, then, rushing into his head like waves. He was replaying childhood memories, long before he was old enough to question the orders thrown at him. Memories of failed tests and attempts to befriend the right people. There was always a lecture, waiting in his mind, a cone threateningly held over his head over broken toy. Lucius' Malfoy's voice, reminding him that he had to be the best, he had to be exceptional.

For years, Draco had shoved away the responsibility whenever he could. For years, he'd told his father about it, when things went wrong, because if someone else had done something wrong, then Draco was not to blame. If others made mistakes, then Draco would always look better than them.

But when had Draco ever been good enough?

And that was the answer, wasn't it? Even now, over a decade after growing up, those words still remained in his head. Never changing, never faltering, because in the end, he was a Malfoy. And he had to be exceptional. And he wasn't.

Draco inhaled shakily, unable to speak, only able to watch his own pain unfold in front of him.

"You want me to choose a life. A timeline." Draco said, avoiding the question as good as he could. "Either the life where I failed everyone, or the one where everyone failed me. The life I lived, or the life I didn't."

"Yes." Sarah said. "So does he." Her eyes were resting on the station outside.

"Harry?" Draco asked, fear clutching in his chest. "He's dead too?"

"I think death is a difficult word for what this is. And death, he doesn't ever seem to accept it, does he."

"Which life will he choose?" Draco asked, suddenly scared. "I'm angry at him, but I can't –" He was beyond fury and rage. But not seeing him again? Draco would lose him? He hadn't even spoken his mind to him yet. Hadn't fought him yet. Not properly anyway.

"I don't know." Sarah turned around and sat back on her chair. "And you shouldn't make your decision based on where he goes. You have to make your own choices."

"What will happen to the world I don't choose?"

"It will seize to exist, I think. But I'm not entirely sure. It's just a theory." Sarah said thoughfully. "Except for in your memories, of course. They will remain."

Draco snapped around. "But –" Somehow, this was even worse. He had to choose a side and kill the other? "I can't –" He nearly broke down. "I can't – I can't kill them."

"You wouldn't. It would be like they were never born." Sarah tried to comfort him. "That's different."

"Then why do all this?" Draco stared at her. "You sent me back in time to confront my past, but I got broken down even worse than before!"

"And yet, you've done better than all those years we've worked together." She sent him a smile. And it strangely felt like a final one. "I think you have your answers, Draco. Have you made your choice?"

Draco blinked at her, then out the window and then at the door.

Once again, he had a choice. Timeline A, or Timeline B, ... or not doing anything at all. Staying here, staying dead. Draco blinked and took a deep breath. This time, it seemed so easy to choose to stay, because it was easier to do nothing.

"I have one last question." He said and turned to her expectant face. "If in the end, it was all just in my head, then it was pointless, wasn't it? Then none of it mattered."

Sarah watched him almost with surprise. "Of course it's just in your head. But why on earth would that mean it doesn't matter?