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Comfort

Summary:

A coda to chapter twenty-three: Malfoy Manor.

Narcissa is the best mum (and wife). ♡

Notes:

Yay, I got to write Draco again! ♡ Even though this is short, ha ha. Being continuously tired is not conducive to writing things.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

His mother grabbed his hands and tugged them down from his face. "Draco, don't touch them," she said urgently.

His face hurt and itched from the fragments of crystal embedded in his skin, blood trickling down from the cuts. Draco had half a mind to ignore her, but she was still holding his hands, and she'd always healed his wounds anyway.

He let her guide him close to the fire, and she asked, "Did any get in your eyes? Draco?"

Draco shook his head. "No."

Narcissa breathed a sigh of relief, and then she began to murmur the same lyrical enchantment as Uncle Severus. Draco felt the fragments of crystal come out and patter to the floor, and the skin knit closed gently.

Draco opened his eyes after and saw his mother's worried, fraught face in the flickering light of flames. She was caressing his face in that way she had when he'd been very little and sick - wiping at the blood, her mouth pressed thin and pale. Draco wanted to reassure her, but he also wanted to leave. Her worry, everything, felt too much.

"Are you hurt anywhere else?"

"I'm fine, Mother. You don't need to worry," Draco said. Getting cut in the face with shards of crystal wasn't as big a deal as getting nearly eviscerated in a girls' bathroom and thinking that Potter's gormless, shocked face was going to be the last thing he would see.

It wasn't even as bad as being trapped in his own ancestral home with the Dark Lord, Death Eaters, or other reprehensible riffraff. The prisoners locked up in their basement hadn't made his former home any more cosy. Draco used to make the house-elves play prisoners confined there, but the reality wasn't as fun as childhood games.

Narcissa exhaled a breath and turned towards Lucius, dispelling the stunning spell on him. Aunt Bellatrix was raging in the background, then her voice was abruptly cut off, and the room seemed to grow dimmer and smaller. Draco felt a chill prickle down his back, all the fine hair on his body standing up. He didn't need to look. The Dark Lord had arrived.

The next hour was the longest of his life.

There are things that a person should not experience, things he can't ever forget, and hearing his parents' screams while they were tortured is one of them. Getting tortured himself wasn't so bad, however. Draco had gotten quite good at Occlumency, and he could keep himself detached enough that he didn't go insane.

Afterwards, he lay panting and shaking on the floor. Every nerve in his body hurt, and his throat ached from his own screams, but his mind was cool and clear and far away. Draco heard his mother shift and move, and then she was there, her gentle hand in his hair, shaking slightly too. Her hair and clothes were in disarray, and it struck Draco as wrong because his mother had always been impeccable and elegant. Narcissa reached over Draco for Lucius, who looked even worse than before. He was deathly pale, his eyes gleaming feverishly. After a while, he shifted and clutched Draco's hand together with his mother's. Narcissa leaned over them both, her long pale hair shielding them. It reminded Draco of childhood, sneaking into their bed after a nightmare or simply because he didn't want to sleep alone.

Draco closed his eyes and let himself hide in his parents' comfort for a moment.

Notes:

Thank you for reading. :)