Murder to Malfoy - D.MALFOY

[53]

Ivy was in her dreamland. She could tell since the edges of her vision were blurred and she had eleven fingers (the last time she checked.) She had always been able to have some sort of awareness of her dreamland since childhood but, this awareness never occurred in bad dreams. So, when she noticed the extra finger on her hand and became aware of the situation, she believed she had finally reached a place where she could have good dreams again.

Boy, was she wrong.

It started as a memory. When she and her brother had caught a cornish pixie from a random area of their garden. They had captured the animal and hidden it in the basement, away from where their parents would see. They had both promised that day to take the secret of the pixie to their graves, not ever mentioning it again. She had forgotten all about it but now, as she watched the events occur all over again, she remembered every second and laughed along with her brother.

Only when they walked into the basement, the surroundings morphed into his bedroom and once again, she fell into a nightmare. Normally her nightmares consisted of the dead body but today, she was to watch it happen. Her feet were stuck in thick mud at the door, so she was unable to move as she watched the events unfold. She stared into the cold eyes of Lucius as he talked to her brother, their voices coming out muffled. She watched in absolute horror as Lucius shot the spell at her brother, his screams becoming deafening and abundantly clear within her mind. The screams never relented and only seemed to get louder.

They even rung in her ears when she shot awake, sitting up in bed as tears rolled down her face, body slicked with a cold fearful sweat. Her breathing came ragged, heavy and in sharp bursts that suggested she had been running for miles. "Darling?" Draco's voice came from beside her sounding slow, hoarse and full of sleep.

"I'm okay," she reassured, looking back to his half-asleep half-awake figure. "Go back to sleep," she whispered, brushing some of the hair from his eyes in order to give her some sort of sense of calm.

He rested his head back down on the pillow, squinting open eyes close again as he let out a deep and sleepy sigh.

Ivy slunk out of bed, making sure to not move the covers off of him so he did not wake up again, she felt bad that she had already woken him up. She slowly and silently pulled on a dressing gown, as the open window in her bedroom that she had opened for him had begun to form goosebumps on her arms. The tapping of her socked feet against the wooden floor of her room sounded softly as she walked out of the room, carefully opening and closing her bedroom door behind her.

She walked down the dimly lit corridor, moon still high in the sky, and slowly headed toward the door from her dream. She paused outside the door, looking at the surface of it without as much as a hint of any emotion on her face. She lingered there, just waiting for the screaming warnings in her head to cease, or to quieten enough that she could best them. Ivy inhaled deeply as she reached for the door handle, fingers brushing against the cool metal. It took little effort, a simple twist of a handle, yet to her it felt as if she was lifting the weight of a thousand different cars all pilled on top of her. She paused as the door cracked open and gently let it open on its own.

It took her a few seconds to step through the threshold of the door. When she did, she was hit with the overwhelming smell of Antony, his cologne mostly but just his smell. She sighed softly as she looked around the room, some higher-up items covered in a thin layer of dust that must have been out of the boundary of the spell Maman had put on the place to keep it preserved. The curtains were open letting vague speckles of moonlight fall into the bedroom through the large windows, creating such a pattern on the rug by his bed. Ivy walked deeper into the room, heart thudding in her ears and breath so quick she could feel the movement of her chest moving the end of the plait that lay at her shoulders.

She paused, standing completely still, when her gaze fell onto the spot where she had found his body. It looked colder than the rest of the room, uninviting almost. She made the conscious effort to look away, fighting the fight or flight response within her body and suddenly her heart slowed back down and her breathing returned to normal. She kept walking and looked over the minimal books on his shelves, the many photo frames that covered most of the shelves' surface. 

She smiled and picked up one of the pictures of the two of them, both eating ice cream and smiling like they were mad. She glanced over his calendar, still paused on the day that he passed away. She flicked through the coming months, heartbreaking to see the plans he had that would never be fulfilled, funny enough her heart broke the most when she saw a date for a tattoo on the following month. She couldn't explain why that had caused such a reaction.

Ivy next wondered to his wardrobe at the front of the bedroom and pulled open the doors, stepping inside to see such a messy array of clothes that it would give her Maman a heart attack. She laughed to herself then, knowing that he had most likely just shoved all the clothes onto the floor of his wardrobe to make his room look clean - she did the same. She picked up one jumper from the floor, a dark almost navy, blue jumper that he wore around the house most. She smelled that jumper only once ad the tears started to fall again. Memories flooded her mind, memories of him and his laugh that she had once forgotten.

Then, as she sat on the floor in a puddle of her own tears, her blurred gaze fell to a box. An old shoebox with three posits tapped to the front of it, his handwriting scrawled on the front.

'FOR IVY'S SEVENTEENTH- give to Blaise so he can give it to her at school.'

She gently rose from the ground and moved toward the shelf and box. It was on the top of a pile of boxes so it wasn't very difficult to pull down overall. She sat back down on the floor and carefully opened it up. opens it up carefully. After carefully removing a layer of wrapping, making sure not to tear it too much as she felt that was necessary, Ivy picked up a small card on the very top and opened it up.

'Happy birthday!!! Love your amazing and incredible and amazing and intelligent brother :)'

While wiping tears that fell because of happiness, not sadness for once, Ivy opened the other box inside the old shoe box. Underneath a layer of tissue paper, lay a charm for her necklace. A small pixie that directly matched the one that they had hidden in the basement. The tears followed again then, thick tears that tightened her throat and made keeping the sobbing sounds silent physically impossible.

Her fingers trembled and struggled to undo the clasp on the necklace she always wore so she could put the new charm on it too. It was that difficult she had to stop and take a few deep breaths to still her hands again before retying. This time, it was successful and she managed to thread the charm onto her necklace in its perfect place with minimal slip-ups. As she placed the necklace back onto her neck, carefully to make sure she did not lose the charm already, she managed to get some sort of control over her tears and took more deep breaths to try and control them.

"Cadieux?" her ears caught a vague whisper from the corridor, leading her to lay on the floor and lean directly out of the wardrobe. She waited for a second, wondering if she was just hearing things. "Ivy?"

The whisper came again, this time loud enough that she knew she was not imagining it.

"In here," she whispered back, hoping it would be loud enough to catch his attention. Seconds later, Draco poked his head into the doorway of the bedroom while being sure not to cross the threshold into the room. Upon seeing her head poking out of the wardrobe, his face turned from concern to shock then to something prideful that brought a smile to both their faces.

He looked around the room apprehensively, "Am I allowed..."

"Course," she whispered back before sitting back up n the wardrobe, slowly packing the box back up. Draco, while she folded over wrapping paper, walked into the room and directly to her making sure he did not touch anything. He sat behind her, in the space without clothes on the floor that she had created and gently rubbed at the goosebumps on her shoulders - as her robe had been pulled off due to it suddenly feeling scratchy and uncomfortable - with his hands. "I'm so proud of you," he whispered softly, watching as she looked over the minimal clothes on the hangers.

She smiled and leaned back a little, resting her head against his shoulder. "Me too."