Dare - Draco Malfoy

A/E - Chapter 66: Three years later

My left arm is aching, pressed under my body. It's numb. 

I move it slowly, freeing it of the weight of me. 

My lips are parted, mouth dry. 

I squint my eyes as the light peers through the curtain gaps. 

I turn around, the pillows on the other side still puffy, untouched. I sit up. I stretch and close my eyes. They are clouded. But I stand, shaking my head picking a shirt for the day. 

The clothes falling off my body meet the floor with a muffled noise. And as I enter the shower all is lost. The water calming me. Settling my mind.

- 

It has been three years and the agony never left, but  it just quietened. I think of her often. I think of her everyday. This place makes me think of her, and all the things we could have become in here. 

-

The manor in Cambridge is exactly how I remembered it. The long gravel path leading to the two sided stairs. The house itself develops symmetrically, forming a main middle section and two identical parts at each end. It has been tainted by the passing of time. Large windows covering the entire front. Weeds and wild flowers grew freely during its vacancy. A gravel path leads up to a two-sided stone staircase. This too, covered in wild green leaves. The main door is broad and made of a dark wood. A terrace is right above it, accessible by a glass door.

It's not as big as the one I grew up in, but it's still very big. It's much more welcoming too, missing the dark and cold aura of the manor. The park seems to extend for miles beyond the mansion.

I moved here at the end of the summer after the battle. After I lost her. I couldn't stand to stay at the manor. In the place where she was stained. 

I was offered to work at the ministry, training with Mr Scamander in the Auror department head office. It was hard to let it pass, given my chances to gain any type of position because of my family's affairs with the death eaters. 

I spent most of the summer after Hogwarts fixing this place up. I remember when I first walked in here, there was furniture and paintings allover, covered in drapes. Ghostly silhouettes inside an almost forgotten manor in the middle of nothing. I fixed the garden, I like the way it became so elegantly messy.  It reminds me of her. The willow by the pond creates the same light as the dorms in Hogwarts. 

I miss her. 

Everyday.

I miss what we could have been. 

I still remember the day Aria confessed she was pregnant. It was a few months after the battle. She could not live without telling me. And my world came to an end. The most atrocious pain, as if Lucifer himself dragged my insides to hell with him. 

I spent night after night reliving the memory of the last night she came to my dorm. The last night I kissed her, held her. The last time I told her I loved her. I think of her calling my name, wanting to say something. The thought of her growing our love inside her made me hurt myself. Many times.

It became the only form of release. 

I would have brought her here. I would have let her make this place our home. She would have loved the nature. We would have raised a baby. We would have been happy.

I spend most days in the library. I spend most days here because it reminds me of the room of requirement. Our place, where we belonged, together. 

It was this place, the room of requirement. It's what I embodied, what it turned into. It's a twin. The shelves are identical. A table and a couch are positioned in the same place.

Although the shelves contents are a little different. Poetry in foreign language. Essays, and history encyclopaedias. No dark arts. No curses and defences books.

But this morning I sit here, by the lake, closing my eyes. Letting the light guide the blurred darkness behind my lids. I sit and listen to the water, the willow floating melancholically. I feel the wind, hot over my head. I am light. I feel numb. My hands rested beside me. I tap the front pocket of my pants. I pull out a gold chain, it's a pendant, uneven on the edges. It was Maeve's. I have kept it with me.  She left it in my room, the night I caught her sneaking out. When I found her. She looked like the most precious thing. The most courageous, strong, fierce. 

It's a protective talisman. I kept t with me, ever since. Hoping one day I could give it back, no longer in need of it. But without her now, I am lost. 

I stay and remember. Remember her, us. Remember the dare this all was. 

And there is nothing else, but the present dipped in the epitome of despair, and lived in the deepest realms of sorrow. 

The end