Draco Malfoy

The Lestranges. The thought of Bellatrix breaking out chilled her even more. What Lucius and Narcissa believed was horrifying, and she was afraid of what they might have done that Andromeda didn’t know about, but Bellatrix had happily committed atrocities and she would again.

“I believe you,” she began to say soothingly, but then Draco continued, and her brow furrowed deeply. “Yes. They would have loved you…” 

They would have loved him, of course they would have loved him. Narcissa would have been an excellent mother to him. Perhaps more indulgent of him, able to dedicate more time to him than Andromeda herself, with her greater wealth and her lack of being preoccupied with an older daughter and a mediwix job. He’d be spoiled, probably. Happier, perhaps. 

But this was about Draco and what she could do for him now, not about all the what-ifs of her being an unsuitable parent for her nephew. “They would have loved you for you. Narcissa would have understood you.” Better than Andromeda would ever be able to understand him–she tried and tried, but she knew she had failed before and would again despite her best efforts because she simply didn’t have the experience that Narcissa did with Draco’s process of becoming, even though she had proudly stood by both of them through it.

When he asked if they would change their minds, though, she sat back. 

“No,” she said quietly but firmly. “No. I don’t think that’s possible, Draco.” She brushed her thumb over her wedding ring. “My Ted was part of it, but my mind had begun to change even before I fell in love with him. I grew more and more out of step with the Black ideology while my sisters fell in line with it. They had a choice, Draco.” Her eyes were hard. “No doubt they’ll take you back, but I think they would happily step over your uncle’s body to do it.”

Perhaps they were harsh words for a boy. But he had to grow up sometime, she told herself.

Draco allowed himself to indulge in the luxury of hope as Andromeda spoke her promises and reassurances once more, his hopes fluttering high and free as a bird unfettered -- but as she kept talking he realized that they had been doxies, not birds, with short stubby wings that could only lift so far and they all thumped back to the floor, heavy and gasping, in the wave of doxicide that was her no.

“Oh,” Draco said, his voice very small and flat. He swallowed, trying not to let on how badly her words had shaken him -- how much the phrase step over your uncle’s body made him shake, how much the words no doubt they’ll take you back made his blood freeze in his veins, his stupid “pure” blood that made him an outsider to his family, to this family, that made him valuable enough to his other family that they would want to take him...

“I -- don’t,” he said, the words coming out in sharp, jagged bursts, as though he were speaking through punctured lungs or bouts of torture, “I don’t -- want to be taken away, though. Taken back.” Back to what? Back to people, to a world, that he didn’t know? A world that daily told him he didn’t belong, that called him blood-traitor and the people he loved filth? There was no “back” for Draco there to go. All he knew was this, was here. “How can...please, there has to be a way to...to stop that. Something I can do, something that will make them--”

The words strangled in his throat. To force them out, he had to let a little boy’s dream die; had to let go of the once-upon-a-daydream idea of the perfect imaginary parents swooping-in to put right everything in his life that had ever been a struggle, to chase away all the bullies and the bigots -- had to admit that those perfect parents didn’t exist as anything but a daydream, and embracing the reality of them could only be done by sacrificing the parents he did have and know and love. He knew which he would choose, of course, between the two -- but it was still hard to kill the comfort of that daydream.

dggrys​:

THIS ISN’T THE FIRST WIZARD TO BULLDOZE HIM TODAY. Granted , Cedric’s grown quite used to it , which is to say grown to EXPECT it. Half the time , he doesn’t know if he’s walking with ghosts or if he is the ghost , but it’s always one or the other. The graveyard , he wears it like a sash or a knapsack , heavy as all hell against the valley of his shoulders and the meat of his neck but ever present. 

You can never forget. 

That’s what he told himself in the beginning , back when he needed a reason to keep going , keep pushing , keep FIGHTING. Now ? He just — can’t stop saying it. 

❛ Draco ? Oh - Oh , no , you’re good. You’re— ❜ It’s instinctive really , the bulk of it , because otherwise he has no clue what to say. He doesn’t know what day it is half the time , much less what’s going on around him , but he does his best to be what they expect him to be. A beacon of hope , a symbol of justice , a hero ! A survivor ! He is none of those things. He has never felt like any one of those things. He feels like … He feels like … A GHOST. 

❛ I walk quiet. It happens. ❜ 

He knows there is supposed to be some kind of overwhelming emotion here. Anyone else would feel some kind of overwhelming emotion. However , Cedric has long been immune to such things. He fights each and every day to meet his father’s expectations , and that’s hard enough without having to uphold some semblance of a status quo. He knows what they say , about the Malfoys , about purebloods in general who swapped sides at the last possible moment. And he understands. But he has no room in his heart for HATE. And that’s the difference. 

❛ I , uh , haven’t seen you since … Well , how are you ? ❜

Cedric doesn’t react in any of the ways Draco expects -- any of the sudden bursts of fear that flicker across his mind at the sight of the other man’s eyes turned toward his. He doesn’t go for his wand, doesn’t shout, doesn’t snarl, doesn’t Curse, doesn’t call a mob, doesn’t raise a fist, doesn’t raise a scene. Instead, he...

He acts like the last place they saw each other was on the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch; like the only rivalry they ever fought their way through was one that played-out with brooms and Snitches. Small talk, that’s what he does. Cedric Diggory makes small talk -- with him! With Draco Malfoy, Death Eater!

Draco doesn’t know how to react. He’s learned to endure taunts and threats, learned how to duck his head and hide his face, to flee...but small talk? He has no idea how to handle that. How to just...talk to someone, someone his father watched nearly die once, no less...but he can’t exactly turn his back and snub Diggory, can he? Not him.

So he licks dry lips and resists the instinctive urge to beckon for burly friends who haven’t been around to watch his back in six months and a year and says, “Ah...surviving, yes, thank you.” Not in Azkaban, he wants to say -- wants to say it so badly it leaves him feeling giddy, head hollow and reeling -- so better than I deserve, thank you. “I’m surviving. How are...how are you?” A stupid question, and he knows it even as the words leave his mouth; how is a hero of the bloody war supposed to be doing?

As he listened, Gregory found himself wondering when this had all happened. The transition away from the eyes-on-the-target, solid being that he’d seen him as… and this— riddled with uncertainty and guilt like shackles. It hurt even worse to imagine that it’d always been there and that perhaps he just hadn’t seen it. Perhaps he’d just been a few paces back, focused on a tall spine and missing a glint of warning in Draco’s eye. And maybe Greg truly was as daft as they’d all said.

It hurt. It hurt to listen, to watch, and now to know. Instinctively, his head shook from side to side in small, hardly there movements until gradually growing stronger. “You can’t…” Stronger now, sharper movements: as if that could shake this all away. “Don’t tell me you think this is…” His hand started at the center of his chest before gesturing off towards the third. Goyle. Headstone. Dead. His jaw tensed at the word even just in thought. “’Ya can’t think this is your fault.”

Just as he said it Goyle’s shoulders dropped. Of course Draco thought it— because he’d thought it himself too. There was a lot of room for thoughts in five years. Nearly three million minutes of stewing with the worst of them. Blame had been easiest in the winter months, when the cold crept down your back with no forgiveness. All the orders echoed then, down to the very last one. Fingers pointed at the ice blond.

One hundred and sixty seconds of festering could do a world of damage.

But there was also a difficulty is sitting still, even when it was just holding onto a single thought. Greg had never been skilled at chess. Ask him what direction a rook moved and he wouldn’t have the slightest idea. He had watched a fair bit of matches, remembered how the pieces moved. All to protect the king, right? Rook to G4. Pawn to E3. All just jumbled pieces, letters, and numbers to him but the idea still stood— so firmly in fact that Greg took a step closer, his head giving one last, hard shake. “What about the orders you had? Huh?” He asked, head dipped as he fought to catch Draco’s eye. Five years had done enough. Clearly Goyle hadn’t been the only one with a prison sentence. “We followed. All of us. You included. So don’t… I can’t have ‘ya…” The words were catching in his throat. “Don’t.”

With a deep sigh, Goyle craned his head back to look up at the sky. Grey clouds moved glacially along, nearly hiding all of the blue. “I wondered why you weren’t there,” he admitted, gently nodding. “Seems like you want to hear it so here it is. I thought it. For months. Wondered why the fuck isn’t he here? You know, why’s it just me?” With his gaze still upward, Gregory’s jaw tightened. His hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers, old and over-sized, kept on with the help of his father’s belt. He pressed his lips tight together as the memories piled up. He could feel the chill on his spine. Like he was there again. “It got so fucking dark there. There was a horrible quiet too. Not quiet enough to be silent— no.” Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “You could always hear the shufflin’ and this woman screaming. And your mind it just never could stop because there was always all these thoughts and whatever.” With his eyes now closed, Goyle stood quiet in that moment. But much like Azkaban his mind kept going. Right then it was transporting him back. There was no graveyard beneath his feet; just stone and layers and layers of occupied cells. “It never stopped.” He worried it never would. 

Swallowing hard, he brought his head back down, his eyes slowly lifting back to meet his gaze, glossier now than before. “Tell me why the fuck I’d’ve wanted that for you?”

Draco looked up, meeting Gregory’s eyes straight-on out of shock, too startled to flinch or cringe again. “Of course it’s my fault,” he said -- not a protest; just a bare, bald statement of fact; tired, not outraged. There was no room for outrage against the coldness of the truth: Draco had been the one in charge, which meant that all the horror that had happened to the three of them -- all the ways that everything had gone wrong -- they all lay at his feet. The Dark Lord’s orders had been something else, a separate Hell of their own; they had been about Draco and about his parents and about Potter and the war. They didn’t have anything to do with the friends whom he’d led to fire and suffering.

But Gregory said don’t, and Draco didn’t -- not because he’d grown accustomed to taking orders himself, but because he knew that listening for once was the least that he owed the worn, weathered man in front of him.

The words that follow hurt, but Draco didn’t try to cut them off; didn’t let himself back away. He owed Gregory this, too, after all -- and of course Gregory had thought that, of course he had wondered why Draco wasn’t in the cell beside him. Draco had wondered the same, every night -- and he hadn’t had dementors clawing at his soul to remind him. Gregory’s words mirrored his father’s talk of Azkaban, one of the few subjects in the world about which Lucius was hesitant to speak. Familiar or not, the words still hit Draco like a lash as he pictured his friend in that Hell. It never stopped, they’d both said -- never stopped.

Draco shuddered, fought hard to keep his eyes open, to keep them fixed on Gregory’s face rather than dropping his gaze and turning away from a truth that clawed at him like the Cruciatus Curse, the truth that his best friend had suffered because of him; the truth that he should have suffered alongside him, should be suffering there still -- but.

But Gregory said...

He didn’t, then? He’d changed his mind? No longer wanted...?

Draco blinked. Stared. Blinked again. “You...you don’t want...? But...but it’s my fault you were there, I should have...I ought to have...the least I owed you was to be there with you...” In all the weeks of trails, the weeks of fearful anticipation, Gregory Goyle had crossed Draco’s mind only in fits and starts, smothered beneath the overwhelming weight of his fried and guilt over Crabbe’s death and his fears for himself and his parents. He hadn’t thought he had to fear for Greg, too -- hadn’t thought that Gregory would be sentenced. Not to Azkaban. Not for so many years. Grege hadn’t even been a Death Eater, didn’t even bear the Mark -- hadn’t pledged himself to the Dark Lord...like Draco had. It wasn’t fair -- it wasn’t fair.

What did she feel. She felt so many things. Her feelings were certainly complex, whatever Draco claimed about his own emotions. She was trying to teach him to be more expressive, though all those lessons about expressing weakness still had a hold on Andromeda herself.

“Narcissa is my sister,” she said quietly, “no matter what the family tree says.” She swallowed and shook her head. “But what she stood for, Draco–her ideology is wrong and could have been deadly for your uncle. For me as well, in fact, blood traitor that I am.” Scorn licked around the phrase. She pressed her lips together, expression pained. “I can honestly say, though it’s not an easy thing to admit, that I feel safer with both of my sisters behind bars.”

She rubbed her thumb against the bumpy surface of the mug. “She wanted a baby, so badly, ever since we were young. I promised that I would help her–but then we didn’t speak for years. She found her own way to have you.” Andromeda didn’t know if that expressed the full complexity of what she felt or if anything could.

Lucius–well. Andromeda was highly selective in her affections, and she had never cared for him.

“I -- I know she’s bad,” Draco said, voice catching in his throat. “I’m glad she’s locked up, and my father and the Lestranges too. I don’t even want them to get out, aunt, I swear I don’t!” How many times had people spat the words blood-traitor at Draco in the hallways? How many duels had he fought after-hours behind the teachers’ backs, outnumbered and alone? He’d never told his aunt and uncle about those, not wanting them to know he was breaking the rules (his cousin, on the other hand, had heard about most of them, and had taught him a number of useful spells to use for such occasions -- although more often than not, it was the spells his aunt had passed-along just in case that won Draco the fight, or at least let him hold his own enough to make it out without taking too much hurt) but perhaps he should have been more open about that...perhaps his aunt didn’t think he understood, didn’t think he cared, about Uncle Ted enough? Perhaps she thought he wasn’t enough of a blood-traitor to support the family -- the Tonks family, his family, the only family he knew and the one he claimed by choice rather than surname.

Had it been Draco’s choice he would have abandoned the name Malfoy years ago.

“I don’t want to ever meet my parents,” Draco insisted, although inside of him a tiny voice wailed at the lie. “I just...I don’t know. You said you loved my mother, when you were kids. And you always told me they’d loved me, that they would have loved me, if they’d not been in Azkaban.” That they would have loved him for himself, no matter what -- Draco would never forget that conversation, when Aunt Andromeda had found him sobbing in his bedroom with what should have been his third dose of the Attisgalli Corrective Draught lying undrunk beside him, torn with guilt over whether or not it was right for him to abandon the little girl that Andromeda had always assured him his parents had loved. She’d told him that they would have loved this him, too -- and if that was true, maybe...

evenbyanothername​:

“She’ll be fine,” Rose offered him a shrug. “Obviously it was frightening at first, but the healer has already told us that she’ll need to stay overnight, but that they reversed the curse’s damage in plenty of time and she should be able to go home tomorrow.” 

Rose was weirdly calm in a crisis. Albus had always told her that. She was a rock, he had said. The truth was that she was just very good at being more afraid of a concept than the reality. Once something actually happened there was nothing to do but move forward. And, as she’d said, Lily was going to be fine.

At this point, she was a little more worried that Draco wouldn’t be fine, and that was the more pressing concern, as far as she was concerned. 

“I’m fine,” she said, shaking her head. “I was actually going to go and get some tea. Did you want some?”

It was very odd how easily Rose seemed to take the whole thing in stride -- odd, and slightly disquieting. Shouldn’t a girl who had never known a world at war, who had never known a life defined by Curses, be a little more flustered by the fact that her cousin had nearly been killed by one? Perhaps that was just it, though: perhaps to Rose, a Curse didn’t seem real. Something out of stories, out of history books -- not something that could happen to her, or those she knew now. That would be a nice way to think about it...

Of course, she could just be in shock with the other shoe still waiting to drop. But Draco could hope that her consanguinity was caused by a lack of true comprehension rather than being a sign of a pending breakdown.

“Tea sounds lovely,” he said, forcing a smile. “I’ll go with you, if you like -- stretch my legs.” And keep an eye on her, just in case ugly reality suddenly came home to roost.

Andromeda was alarmed at the lack of a response from Draco, his increasingly contorted expression and then suddenly, the spill of tears. “Oh, Draco–” As he had grown older, she had watched him grow less and less expressive, becoming colder and harder in response to a world that was harsh. “You don’t have to be fine,” she told him firmly.

She squeezed his hands. “I wished you did not have to live through these times. As I did. As…Narcissa did.” Her tongue couldn’t twist around ‘your mother.’ She was not quite so selfless as to deny herself the title unless Draco did first. She closed her eyes and exhaled a long breath.

“I understand if your feelings around this are…complex,” she ventured carefully. She had to say it, of course, and yet the idea that Draco could have some loyalty to Narcissa, who had turned her back on Andromeda, who had a choice just as much as Andromeda did or didn’t and had chosen the wrong side…and as a consequence, had never been here to raise her son–it stung. 

“They are your birth parents.” That was clinical, detached. Something she would have a patient write on one of the endless forms at Mungo’s, devoid of emotional baggage. Or it should be. She set down her mug and stared at it for a moment. “I’m not asking you not to feel anything for them. That would be impossible, not to mention hypocritical of me.”

She was a Tonks now. But she had been a Black. And that didn’t wash out so easily. Once, she had a sister whom she loved. And once, as hard as it was to remember now, she had a sister who loved her, too. She sometimes wondered to herself whether it wasn’t easier to love Draco because she saw something of Narcissa mirrored in his mannerisms.

Of course he had to be fine; what else could he be? As his aunt had just reminded him, she had lived through all this and worse before, and yet he was the one sitting her blithering. He had to get control, to stop behaving like a baby. Nymmie was already grown, graduated from Auror training and out fighting the forces of darkness every day, and he couldn’t handle one silly conversation at his own kitchen table without crying. It was pathetic.

Draco made a herculean effort to pull himself together, shoulders shuddering and lip trembling until he caught it between his teeth and pinned it still; he took a deep breath and held it until the tears stopped -- or at least the sobs. No matter how fast he blinked, his eyes still dripped, but if he wasn’t fine at least he was better. Maybe better would be enough.

“They’re not -- complex,” Draco lied, nervous at how well his aunt seemed to understand him. Could she see what he was thinking? Could she tell how selfish and ungrateful he was, to want so much more than he deserved? Did she know that it tore him up with guilt, or did she think he was as callous as the criminals who’d birthed him? Your birth parents, she said, and the words were like a lash, reminding Draco that he wasn’t hers, that no matter how she said she thought of him he would never be hers. “I just...”

The silence was horrid. Gregory itched to fill it, his hand at his side flexing as a means to fill the void. Fingers splayed, muscles taught. A small something to hold onto as he dealt with the biting of his tongue. Though Azkaban, and even his past, had left him with expertise in remaining mute, he struggled with it now. Each beat, each empty void— it was if it longed for him to fill it. Stall and pay the consequences of memories he need not want to revisit.

Greg was sure to keep his eyes off the grave. One glance had been enough for the day. Another was sure to break his heart completely. Even the thought. Crabbe. Fuck. He turned his head back further, his jaw clenching both with the thought and with Draco’s words. How long had he imagined this? Those words? They all felt like fantasy before but… now? A breath escaped his lungs. “We’d’ve done anything for you,” he admitted, his shoulders falling low as he stared off towards the trees, watching as the wind blew them to and fro. At it’s mercy. “It means a lot, ‘ya know. The sorry. So I don’t want ‘ya thinkin’ it’s too late.” He shook his head slow. The grave between them remained still. But Greg swore if it could move it’d do the same: nod. Funny how it’d been years but he could still feel him: Crabbe. Could understand what he wanted or needed with just a look. 

Overwhelmed, he took a step back, drawing a breath as he focused on the soil. This was why he hadn’t come closer. Why he’d stopped at the gates. At the sight of his stone. His hand flexed again at his side, for much different reasons this time than silence. “Don’t punish ‘yaself,” he practically gasped, words tumbling out in a single breath.

“I get it,” Gregory admitted, looking up at Draco’s face. It still amazed him to see it. For years it’d just been imaginary, but now? Real. Tangible. He could reach out and touch it and it wouldn’t disintegrate. His hand even shifted forward, tempted. The blond had been a frequent occupant of his thoughts across the years. Greg had replayed their school years time and time again. Highlights of his life on repeat. Highlights. The word itself nearly caused him to scoff. Low. It all felt low now.

Continuing his thought from before, lines drew across his forehead. “Trust me. I had time to look it back.” How much time had passed again? Five years and…. they’d just said it. Time. It hadn’t been his friend, not for years. “The sorry, yea, means a lot but stop. Please. I can’t see ‘ya like that. I just—” His head shifted over, practically daring to catch sight of the grave. Crabbe. His heart thumped louder. “I need a bit of the old you. More than a bit.” He laughed, hating himself as he did it, like this was the perfect moment for a joke standing at the grave of their friend. Brother. His heart ached again.

“You used ‘ta order us around all the time,” he mused. And now, when Greg opened his mouth it wasn’t like before. Not a request or a suggestion, more an order. Harder. “Tell me it’s different now. Tell me.”

Gregory looked like he wanted to leave -- unwilling to look at Draco, unwilling to look at the empty stone plinth that was all that was left of Vincent Crabbe -- like he was on the verge of backing straight out of the graveyard and out of Draco’s life forever. Draco couldn’t blame him, wouldn’t blame him for that -- but his words didn’t sound like the words of someone who was leaving and Draco fixed on that fact, desperate for Gregory to mean it; to truly believe that it wasn’t too late...not for them, anyway. The two of them.

Everything would always be too late for Crabbe, and Draco knew that he would never forgive himself for that.

But Gregory finally met his eyes -- looked like he was on the verge of reaching out, of closing that insurmountable Crabbe-sized, Azkaban-sized gap between them -- and Draco allowed himself to believe that maybe, maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe Gregory was right. He reached forward in answer, the movement instinctive, grasping for his friend’s hand -- but stopped and let it fall, two feet short, empty.

Greg spoke again before Draco could sort his way through the tangle in his own heart enough to reply and it took him aback, the command -- the plea -- to stop. He stared, feeling like the world was sinking below his feet. A bit of the old him? Did Gregory really think there was any of him left? The world had fallen apart and taken the confident, commanding boy called Draco Lucius Malfoy away with it; the man he was now was more shell than spine, and he didn’t have it in him to issue orders to anyone. What would those orders even be, if he tried? And who would want to listen?

“I...I don’t...I don’t know that I can,” Draco admitted helplessly. “I don’t know that I know how anymore. When I...before, it was...I knew the answers, I knew what to do. That’s why I...” He shook his head. “But now, I don’t...I mean, I didn’t get any of us very far, did I?” He couldn’t stop himself from glancing sideways at the bitter reproach of Crabbe’s tombstone, silent but somehow still screaming its accusations to the sky. “Following my orders...what good did that do any of us?” Draco’s voice was as bitter and pitiless as the stone. “You in Azkaban, Crabbe...” He had to swallow down the lump in his throat before he could force the word out: “Dead. And me...” Draco shook his head. “I should have been there with you. I don’t know why they didn’t -- why I wasn’t...”

andyblacktonks​:

Andromeda was relieved when Draco chose to sit with her. She held his hand tightly, her other hand covering his as well, wanting to give him the kind of reassurance and comfort her parents had so rarely offered. She could see the turmoil on his young features. She had wanted so badly for Nymphadora and Draco to have childhoods full of light, out from under the shadows of war. 

She could see the plea in his eyes, but she had never been one for empty platitudes. He was old enough now, she decided, that he could begin to grapple with the situation, come to terms with the reality.

Yet she didn’t want him to think this way. She was, frankly, shocked when Draco asked whether he would have to leave.

“I can’t say whether your parents will be released,” she said gently. His parents. Her sister and her brother-in-law. Azkaban was dreadful and yet–the world was safer with the Death Eaters and their sympathizers locked away where they couldn’t hurt who Andromeda thought of as her real family now. Ted and the Tonks family had shown her unconditional love and new beginnings. They had all helped her raise Draco. She felt a cold stab of fear at the thought that they would be released and demand custody of the child that was biologically theirs but she thought fiercely was hers, her boy. She had loved him and protected him for almost all his life, and she would always do so.

“But I can reassure you that they will not take you away from me, not without a fight,” she promised him. By the glint in her eyes, it might be a fight to the death. Leaning forward, she kissed his forehead. “Draco, regardless of the circumstances of your birth, know that I consider you my own son.”

Draco nodded his understanding as she spoke, trying to be strong -- to be brave. Trying not to let-on that he had a lump in his throat so big he could hardly swallow. Trying to breathe slowly and calmly so as to keep himself from bursting into tears. He was torn, and he hated it -- guilt clenching tight and icy in his guts. He couldn’t help wondering, if his parents did get out, if he did meet them, what would they be like? Would they like him? Would they like the fact that he was him? Would they know him, if they saw him? Or would they only be looking for the little girl they thought they’d left behind? Would they hate him for being a blood-traitor too, like the boys in his dormitory? Would they love him as their son?

Each question spiraled inside his head, cutting like knives. How could he be so selfish, so ungrateful, to even wonder such things when he had his aunt and uncle? His parents were criminals, villains -- he knew this. They belonged in Azkaban. He shouldn’t care about what they would think about him; shouldn’t want them to think anything. He hated himself for being weak enough to wonder, even as the thought that they might escape the prison had his hands going clammy with fear. He didn’t want them to get out -- didn’t want any Death Eaters to get out, where they might hurt his uncle or anyone else (like him). And yet...and yet, he couldn’t help but wonder what if...

The guilt of his traitorous thoughts snarled and snapped at Andromeda’s promise and when she kissed his forehead, he couldn’t swallow the tears any more: they spilled past his lashes and flooded down his cheeks, his shoulders heaving as he tried to suppress his sobs. Draco pulled his hand free so he could scrub both of them over his face, desperate to banish his tears. He was fifteen years old, far too old to cry like this in front of his aunt -- or anyone! “I’m s-sorry,” he stammered. “I wasn’t -- I’m not -- I’m fine.” That was a lie, but he didn’t know how to tell the truth: that he’d tried so hard not to let himself think of her or Uncle Ted as his parents, sure that they would never feel the same...and that he’d realized shortly after arriving at Hogwarts that he’d failed.

@dggrys​

Draco Malfoy had been a free man for a year -- at least in the eyes of the law, his trial over and his wand returned to him. That didn’t mean the rest of the world saw him as someone who belonged outside of Azkaban; that didn’t mean that Draco saw himself any differently. But he was free, and life continued...which meant that unless he wanted to spend the rest of said life hiding in the relative safety of his family home, he needed to learn how to navigate the world outside the manor’s gates again.

Part of him -- a large part -- did want to leave those wrought-iron gates closed forever and let himself fade away like a bad dream...but even bad dreams get bored. And there were potions he needed, and that meant (because now that he was functional enough to go back into his laboratory and do more than stare blankly at the empty cauldrons, he wasn’t about to have someone else brew his draughts for him, not when they would surely be inferior to anything he could brew) he needed ingredients. He could have them delivered, of course -- had been taking deliveries from a shabby little shop on Spindrift Lane that was too poor to turn up its nose at Malfoy gold for almost a year now -- but Draco had always preferred to pick out his own ingredients; that way one knew one was getting the best.

Now, on the third day of trying, he’d finally managed to force himself through the floo to the Leaky Cauldron and all the way out to Diagon Alley (not Knockturn; he wasn’t sure he’d ever go to Knockturn again, no matter how interesting the shops; too many people there had family who were in Azkaban today because of testimony he’d given, he didn’t dare) but when he saw the sign for Ollivander’s wand shop his resolve had crumbled. Was the old man back at work, or had some relative taken over? It didn’t matter; the name was enough to conjure the memories, the horror, afresh. He couldn’t walk past that door, he couldn’t.

He stumbled backwards, retreating -- but found his path blocked by the solid form of the wizard behind him. Draco went to wrench away, lips curling back in preparation for an angry snarl -- but the words died, strangled and silent, when he saw the face of the man he’d bumped into: Cedric Diggory. The boy who’d almost died in the graveyard the night Draco’s father had been dragged back into war by his Dark Mark; the man who’d helped Harry Potter win the war while Draco had let the Dark Lord guide him around like a puppet. He hadn’t seen Cedric since the day the other wizard had testified at the Malfoys’ trials. Of all the people Draco could have nearly bowled-over in his panic to escape Diagon Alley, why had it had to be Diggory?