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Draco looks at the tears making their way down his mother's cheeks. Her mascara is running down from her eyes. Draco can’t blame her. This used to be their home, the place that was a safe heaven until the war started. The overgrown building in front of them doesn’t resemble the house it once was. The perfect garden replaced by weeds that have taken over. Gnomes have nestled their way into the bushes and make more noise than all the white peacocks used to. It’s strange and heartbreaking seeing the home Draco grew up in this broken down. The left-wing has crumbled, the bricks pilled together, overgrown by plants. The front door is broken, the black wood cracked where spells hit it to break it open.
Together with his mother, they step around the broken doors. Draco grabs his mothers hand when they see the torn paintings in the hall. The memory of Draco’s ancestors torn away, to be never heard or seen again. His grandfather was between these, and his grandmother, a kind and loving woman that always encouraged Draco to be his best and to be kind. It was a shame she died so young. Grandfather and father might have been more tolerable of Draco’s choices if she had been around longer.
Most of the furniture has gone, taken or destroyed by the elements. Years of abandonment haven’t done the Manor any good. Or maybe it has. This way no evil Lord can ever call it home again, even though the atmosphere is perfect for a criminal hangout. Draco wonders if any ghost lives in the Manor now, still here after dying in the battle years ago. It had been the worst day of Draco’s life, being part of the resistance that had to storm his family home. Facing his own father in a battle that almost claimed his life. Harry had been enraged when he found out that Draco hadn’t almost made it out. Yelled at him for being an idiot to think he could talk sense into his father during a battle. But Draco had to try, had to see if his father could be saved from a life in Azkaban.
It was the end of the war and the end of the Malfoy legacy. Father had died when Blaise had saved Draco’s life, mother arrested and shipped off to Azkaban until her trial. In the end she was sentenced to five years imprisonment for her crimes during the war. Draco had cried in Harry’s arms when the verdict was made. He knows she had done horrible things, but she was his mother. She was the woman that had learnt him how to walk and talk. She had shown him how a Malfoy had to behave in public and how to hold his cutlery during dinner parties. She had kissed his bruises when he would fall during his explorations of the gardens and hugged him when he felt lonely and afraid after waking up from the nightmares that would plague him when he was little and grandmother had just died.
Mother steps into her old bedroom and walks towards the window. Draco watches as her hand slide over the frame and more tears fall from her eyes. Draco told her it was a bad idea to want to go here, that there was nothing left of the life they once had in the ruin that was once their home. Only mother had wanted to see it, said she needed to say goodbye to her old life. Five years of Azkaban had done her no good, her face was wrinkled and her hair had become thin. Gone was the once strong woman that had stood up for Draco when he told his father that he was gay and in love with Harry Potter. She had been the only reason why Draco had been able to stay at the home he grew up in for the rest of that summer holiday. A year later that option had gone when Voldemort had returned to full power and Draco had gone home with Harry to his home on Privet Drive.
Being roommates with Harry in a muggle home was a challenge. Harry had always said his aunt and uncle didn’t treat him well, what had been the understatement of the century Draco discovered that summer. At least Draco was able to help him with the massive amounts of chores he had to do. Draco even learnt how to cook that summer. It had been something else from being served by house-elves and fancy parties, but it was one of the best summer holidays Draco ever had. And fuck it had been hard to stop sharing a bed when they were back at Hogwarts, Draco in the Slytherin dungeon and Harry up in the west tower with the other Gryffindors.
“Draco, darling, would you be so kind to lend me your wand?” mother asks. Draco hands over the hawthorn wand that he shares with Harry and watches as his mother sits down on the floor and points it at the boards. She whispers some words and the boards open before them. Mother holds out the wand and Draco takes it back. She’s not allowed to have her own during her probation, maybe even never again depending on how well she does in the new world.
Draco watches as his mother takes out a dried bouquet and smells the death flowers. “This was my wedding bouquet,” mother says. Draco sits down next to her and takes the flowers when she offers. “I was so happy back then, marrying into the Malfoy family.”
More and more precious articles rise from the secret vault of Draco’s mother. Draco’s first lock of hair, baby shoes, pictures of Draco when he was little and his father still loved him. Pictures of Lucius showing Draco how to fly and how to hold a wand. Photos of Draco dancing with his mother on one of the fancy balls they used to have. Draco underneath the Christmas tree smiling at the toys he’d just gotten.
“I didn’t know we had any of these,” Draco says. He had searched the burned house after the battle for tokens of his childhood. But there was little left to take. Even Draco’s favourite stuffed toy had taken a hex and was broken among repair. The albums burned with the rest of the library filled with books covering the dark arts. Harry had been even more upset than Draco when he realised what Draco had lost. Growing up without any pictures of his own parents had left a mark.
Mother takes out the last item, a small box. She turns it around in her hands a couple of times. “Your grandmother left this for you when she died. I made sure Lucius couldn’t get rid of it after you left, hoping that one day I would be able to give it to you.”
Draco puts down the photo’s and looks at his mother. A shy smile sits on her lips as she looks at the box. “She knew, you were only five years old and she already knew,” mother says while she shakes her head. “I didn’t want to believe her, said you would grow out of it. Back then I still believed that one day you would marry a sweet witch and continue the bloodline.”
The little box is placed in Draco’s hands. He looks at it and smiles. Grandmother was kind and loving, the way Draco wants to be, tries to be every single day.
“Go on, open it,” mother encourages him.
Draco lifts the lit of the box and stares at his grandmother's ring, the one he used to steal and hide in his room.
“You remember how you kept telling grandmother how you were going to give that ring to the prettiest man in the world to make sure they would marry you?”
Draco nods his head. He loved this ring and all it stood for. Grandmother said it was the way grandfather had told her he would love her forever and all Draco wanted as a little boy was someone who would love him like that. Someone who would hold open doors for him and take him to dances.
“I think your Harry would like it, don’t you?” mother says with a smile on her face. The first real smile Draco has seen on her since he picked her up at the gates of Azkaban. Draco pulls her into his arms and has to fight his own tears.
“Thank you, mother,” he says. He knows what this is, his mothers blessing to spend the rest of his life with Harry. And that means more to him than any other thing she could have given him.
“Now let's go and show me your new home, I’m dying to get to know that boyfriend of yours without the threat of dying in the process.”
Draco laughs and lets go of his mother. They pack up the treasures from the vault and walk out of the Manor. With one final look, they say their goodbyes and disapparate back to Grimmauld Place.