Veritas Vos Liberabit [Drarry Fanfiction]

The Funeral

April 1999, London, England

"Here, some proper tea this time," Amanda put a steaming cup filled with warm milky brown liquid on the coffee table in front of him, "I don't trust a vampire to know much about tea-brewing."

Draco did not answer anything, he was curled up on the sofa with a scratchy fleece blanket draped to his chin and stared numbly in front of him.

"Hey, you did what you had to do..." she said almost comfortingly. "If you're worried about your wand, we'll get you a new one as soon as you settle down in the States."

They had to snap it in half. It was dangerous to make an inferius carry a wizard's wand let alone drive a car. But yet three of them, Amanda, Draco, and the coroner, stood on the highway and watched reanimated Vernon Duddley, or whatever his real name was, sitting at the steering wheel, holding the pieces of the hawthorn wand in his bluish fingers dumbly, and wreck his vintage, Mercedes Benz.

Two things that connected Draco to the people he loved were ultimately destroyed: a car that his father had bought him, and a wand that Harry had been using so much during his fight against the Dark Lord and in the recent months. They had shared it quite frequently those last 24 hours they spent together, passing it to one another. It listened to both of them without ever getting confused as though he and Harry were its two rightful owners. And now it was broken, ready to be found by confused muggle police and inexperienced uniformed Aurors to identify the body in the vehicle as Draco Malfoy.

The girl put a stack of books onto the table next to the cup of tea that was still untouched. Some of them were simple unlabeled journals, bound in black leather, however, the others were quite rare titles related to Legilimency such as "The Art of Mindreading" and "Mindworks".

"If you can't sleep, I thought you might find some of these useful," Amanda said, stroking the spine of one of the volumes absentmindedly. "These belonged to Elise."

The apartment in muggle London they were currently in had many of the items that reminded Draco of Auror Baelish. There was a mug with a golden letter M on it, probably nicked from the Auror's Office, a violin case, propped onto the mantelpiece and a couple of wizarding and muggle photographs on the wall showed Amanda and Elise together, smiling, hugging each other, looking completely carefree and in love.

"It is funny, we met here in England," the girl smiled. "It was my first day out in the big city before starting my apprenticeship at the Department of Mysteries. And I went to this pub, The Prancing Unicorn. It was ladies' night and there she was, parading her crimson uniform like she wasn't an Auror that just showed up at a queer establishment." Draco couldn't help but let out a quiet snicker at the recollection. "She was brilliant, completely insane with her methods sometimes, but absolutely brilliant. She'd once managed to hypnotize an entire roomful of muggles to dance to this ridiculous song because she needed to spot one potion smuggler."

"Did she ever look into your thoughts?" Draco asked carefully. He had never spoken with anyone who had been in a relationship with a legilimens and wanted to know what was considered to be normal and what was completely overstepping the boundaries. The situation with Harry was too complicated for him to even start comprehending. The Slytherin felt as though he had opened Pandora's box. Once Potter had let him into his mind, that door was never closed properly and it was just too easy to poke and prod at it until what little defense was left submitted to his juvenile attempts at mind-reading.

"We had a strict no legilimency policy," Amanda laughed, pointing at a well-read paperback of "Living With Legilimens" on top of the pile, "But she tried boy, did she try. Legilimens just can't stop snooping around, can they?"