Harry Potter - If Potter was a Slytherin
title: If Potter was a Slytherin
setting: end of OotP
Summary: Draco Malfoy muses on Harry Potter in Slytherin.
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Sometimes Draco wonders what might have happened if Potter had taken his hand that day. He seems through and through a Gryffindor now, but a Slytherin isn't a Sytherin because he is evil, but rather because he is ambitious, cunning, and possesses the resolve and strength to do what others won’t. Potter has all that. Sure, he’s seems brave enough to fit in Gryffindor, but ignorance is not the same as absence of fear. Potter's loyal though, a quality Slytherin distinctly lacks, and Draco thinks that had the Weasel not got there first, Potter's loyalty might have funneled toward Draco.
Coming from nothing as he had, Potter would be a kind Slytherin, but maybe it wouldn't have been so bad--it certainly wasn't unheard of. He and Draco might have been on a first name basis, sat together at lunch and traded banter in place of insults. They might have ruled the House together; won every quidditch game together (because Draco rather thinks being a chaser would be fun, always zooming about and dodging, being the center of attention most of the game); bunked side-by-side and stayed up all night planning pranks (Potter certainly has potential there); or even just talking. Potter's loyalty would be genuine, because unlike the moneyed Slytherins, he wouldn't know about double-crossing and flattery and cruelty, and by the time he found out Potter wouldn't care.
Draco stays up sometimes, wondering about this Might-Have-Been, this Never-Was, and then is glad it isn't. He is a Death Eater's son, and as good as one himself, now that the Dark Lord is back to muck-up his school years and his father's life.
But here Draco still wonders, through the starburst of hatred that wells up in him, if this ever would have happened had Potter been in Slytherin. Potter would never have joined the Dark Lord, of course, but maybe he would have sympathized, done something, and then perhaps Lucius Malfoy would not be in Azkaban, and Draco would not have spent that first night in shock and the second feeling such overwhelming devastationsorrowfearanger that he made himself sick.
If Potter had been a Slytherin, Draco wonders if he might have smothered the boy as he slept that first night after Snape took him aside (“Draco, I have some awful news”), or if he would instead have crawled into Harry's bed, smashed him across the face with a desperate fist, and then curled up against him and cried.