Work Text:
Draco walked to the water’s edge, a pair of scissors in his hand.
He had headed north that morning and felt distant enough from the Manor to finally feel the quiet settle in his bones.
He stared down at his reflection in the pool of water, long blonde hair disheveled around the youthful, pointed features of his face. His suit was black and imposing, the perfect costume, one he was certain would look ideal in a casket.
The longer he stared at his reflection, the more easily the features skewed slightly older, the gray of his eyes tinging a slightly more blueish hue, until he was face-to-face with the spitting image of his father.
The slate-colored eyes were wild and unseeing, uncaring. His mouth was agape as if he longed to scream in desperation, but lacked the necessary oxygen. He was wearing the emerald green nightgown they’d found him in six months before the Battle of Hogwarts. There was a rope burn around Lucius’s neck from where he’d hung himself.
Slowly but gradually, the reflection reverted to Draco’s own and while Lucius’s last emotions had been written clear across his face, Draco was an empty shell, blank-faced and stony.
Draco raised the scissors, staring at the razor’s edge with a tiny spark of fascination. He dipped a toe into the little pool of water some miles deep into the Malfoy property and hardly registered the cold. Slowly he waded his way in, making scarcely a ripple as if he was a ghost already.
Draco didn’t watch as he placed the edge of the blade against his inner wrist.
“Tch. What in the world do you think you are doing?”
Draco’s gaze sharpened and focused on a familiar pair of chocolate brown eyes on a pale face standing on the shore of the pond.
“Snape?”
“Go home, Draco,” demanded the ghost.
“You don’t understand—“
The spirit of Professor Snape sighed dramatically. “Do you really want to be like your father?”
Draco blinked, the reality of what he was just about to have done setting in. He quickly snapped the pair of scissors away from his skin as if the metal was so hot it burned. He felt the chill of the water that soaked his pant legs.
“I can’t do it, Snape. It’s too much. The quiet… it’s suffocating. It’ll be so much worse in Azkaban.”
“Grow up, Mister Malfoy,” Snape snapped. “Do you think you are the only one who suffered at the hands of the Dark Lord? Do you think you are the only one who has lost someone? Are you the only person who has done wrong? At least you get to live to repent for what you have done. Be grateful for the air in your lungs and the blood in your veins. Accept what you deserve for your part in this war and live, Draco Malfoy!”
The blonde heaved a tremulous breath and glanced away from the strange warmth emanating from Snape. His gaze caught his reflection in the pool once again and was surprised by the gleam of determination that made his eyes blaze a molten silver.
“I don’t want to be anything like him. He was weak.”
“And you are not?” Snape asked.
Draco considered the question for a long moment. He lifted the scissors once more and, using the water as a mirror, snipped off a lock of his white-blonde hair. He watched the wisps fall to the water and swirl beautifully in its small wake.
“I don’t want to be weak,” he whispered as if it were a secret for only him and the manifestation of his subconscious that was his late Professor to hear. “I’m afraid I am weak, but I don’t want to be.”
“Then don’t be. To fear your own weakness is inevitable. But one can still be brave in spite of the fear. In fact, that is the only time one can be brave.”
Draco smiled at his reflection as he snipped another piece of gold from his mane. “Father always used to say, ‘Beware. I am fearless and therefore powerful.'” Another chunk of hair joined the others. “He was a liar, of course. Lucius was afraid of everything, afraid of his own shadow at the end. He couldn’t even make it to the end of the war, the coward.”
“Do you hate him?”
Draco froze, the scissors poised to take another slice of his past away. “I did. I wish I still did, but I don’t.”
He looked up at the ghost of his professor, marveling at the way his subconscious had made Snape’s eyes more kind, the color striking an unusual resemblance to that of Draco’s favorite sweet, the chocolate frog. Severus Snape had never been so friendly in life, but in death, Draco could remember him however he wanted. And he needed a friend right now.
“Have you been crying?” Snape asked.
Draco smirked sadly. “No. Do you think I should be? Do you think it fair of me to cry when others have had it so much worse than I?”
“I think the pain of others doesn’t diminish your own pain, Mister Malfoy. Everyone affected by the war has an unimaginable experience and I don’t envy your plights in the least. But perhaps crying isn’t how you want to express yourself and that is why you have not let the tears fall just yet.”
Draco hummed in agreement as he cut more of his previous identity away.
“You should head back soon.”
“Aye,” Draco agreed. “Mother will be worried.”
***
The garden door to the Manor was ajar when Draco finally made it back home after an arduously long trek through the expansive Malfoy property. Apparently, he’d traveled much farther than he’d thought that morning. It was nearly nightfall when he made it back home.
A shadow that blocked the light from inside the Manor shifted and suddenly Narcissa was stalking out into the cold night air with the ferocity of a tigress.
“Draco Malfoy, what is the matter with you?! We are on house arrest and you go stalking off to Gods know where, disappear all night! What if a ministry official had come checking today?! You leave no note, nothing telling me you’d gone out! For all I’d known, some crazed death eater at large had snatched you from your bed! How dare you worry me like this— Oh my gods…” Draco had stepped into the light and Narcissa’s voice had gone soft and delicate. “What have you done to your hair?”
Draco ran a hand through the fuzz of his newly shorn tresses. “I—“
His mother tilted her head, her eyes going glassy in the moonlight. She pursed her lips when she spotted the scissors poking out from Draco’s lapel pocket.
“Come on, sweet.” She held out a hand that Draco accepted swiftly. “It’s uneven. I need to fix it.”
Draco was led through the back garden, into the home, and down the hall to the place that his mother had designated as her new room. This wing of the Manor had hardly been touched by the war, and the remaining Malfoys had taken refuge there immediately after posting bail. They hadn’t stepped foot anywhere the Dark Lord had once occupied, nor did they need to. Draco had never been so glad to have such an enormous home.
“Here,” Narcissa said, seating Draco down into the seat in front of the vanity mirror. “This would have been much easier with magic, but I’ll have to make do.”
Draco felt five years old again as his mother began trimming his hair, shaping it up so that everything settled a little more naturally.
“What possessed you, darling?”
Draco shrugged, meeting his mum’s gaze in the reflection of the mirror. “It would have been a nuisance in Azkaban.”
Narcissa stopped cutting and ran a soothing hand through his hair, making the white-blonde tufts stick up in a pleasing manner. She leaned down and kissed his cheek.
“You are not going to Azkaban,” she promised.
Draco didn’t know why, but he believed her. He believed her so much, it hurt. And in that moment, he finally let a tear fall from the corner of his eye and down his cheek. He reached up to wipe it away, his mother squeezing him from behind.
After a minute, Draco shrugged again, trying to regain the sense of nonchalance he wanted to hold on to with an iron grasp. “Well then… I suppose my long hair would have been a nuisance regardless.”
Narcissa’s answering giggle sounded like tinkling bells and for the first time in the four weeks since the Battle of Hogwarts, Draco didn’t feel the silence closing in on him anymore.
He felt alive.
Narcissa kissed her son’s cheek again and smoothed down Draco’s locks. “I think you look very handsome.”
Draco saw Snape in the mirror’s reflection rolling his chocolate brown eyes with undisguised affection.
“Thank you, Mum.” Draco looked at himself in the mirror for a very, very long time. He tried to find any semblance of Lucius in that reflection, but it had disappeared with the rest of his hair. He nodded and smiled shyly. “I like it.”