Chapter Text
May 7th – Five years after The Battle of Hogwarts
The day could have been sunny, but Draco would not have noticed. The rain had soaked through his black suit long ago, but he had already felt cold and empty for some time. He felt dead, just like his mother.
It was not sudden. But time never made things easier. Things were supposed to get better after the war. Voldemort was gone, they were free and their home was empty of darkness. But every time Draco looked down at his forearm, he was reminded of how things would never get easier for him. He would always be viewed with hatred in the eyes of the wizarding world. The only person who looked at him with love was lost now, her eyes sealed forever under the weight of muddy soil.
His father was gone, the rest of his family was either dead too or rotting in Azkaban, so the funeral was small. Draco was thankful that Blaise and Theo stood by his side through it. Astoria held Blaise’s hand during the service, twisting her wedding ring around her finger, but went inside once it had begun to rain. Pansy stopped by to put a hand on Draco’s shoulder, but when he refused to acknowledge it, she left silently. Then it was only the three of them. No one else felt the need to come.
Draco was not entirely surprised. His family had been shunned ever since the war was over. His father was sent to prison, his mother on house arrest. Draco was freed from both sentences thanks to Potter’s testimony, and returned to Hogwarts to repeat his final year, but he almost never left his dormitory, and attended classes solemnly and silently. He was hated by the rest of the world, and felt just as entrapped as his family.
After finishing his final year he returned to Malfoy Manor, and his attention was immediately consumed by his mother, withering by the day like a dying rose, before his very eyes. His diagnostic charms never revealed the source of the lumps on her breasts, but he was no healer, and the charms he was taught were minimal at best. He begged every healer he could to help him, but they turned away, unwilling to save a Death Eater. The last four years had been spent researching and testing every possible method to cure her. A few of his potions seemed to slow the progress, but Narcissa Malfoy faded all the same. Now she was gone.
Draco didn’t hear a word that the celebrant said. His eyes never left the coffin, made entirely of ebony, with a small arrangement of pure white roses, his mother’s favourite. He was only vaguely aware of the coffin being lowered into the ground and the dirt gradually filling the hole. He leaned forward slowly, letting his body run automatically as he grabbed a fistful of damp dirt. His hand trembled slightly as he held it over the pit before he opened his palm and let the soil trickle out. Once the ground was flat, a layer of fresh green grass sprouted around her tombstone, looking like it had not been touched. But his eyes lingered where the coffin had been.
Empty. He felt so empty. Being sad was such a pathetic description for the way he felt. It did not even begin to describe the wholeness of the ache that surrounded him. Because her being gone meant he was alone. And he was already so lonely. Blaise and Theo could only do so much. He was still the man of the Malfoy house now, the man of every vacant room and empty hall.
Since the day of her death, the emptiness began, and it grew with each passing day. Neither sleep nor food could fill it, and he found the black dress shirt hang loosely around his waist, where it once fit perfectly.
There was no way to tell how much time had passed. It was not until he felt a warm hand grab his forearm and tug slightly that he felt himself return to the present.
“Let’s go inside Draco. It’s starting to get dark,” Blaise’s quiet voiced reached his ears. He finally let himself be pulled away. The headstone watched him leave, the flowers drenched in the cold rain.