By The Light Of A Dying Flame ~ Drarry Fanfic

Chapter 29: Draco

Draco climbed the stairs to the third floor, a path as familiar to him as breathing. His limbs seemed to be moving of their own accord in slow, drudging steps. Numbness had spread through his entire body, turning his brain into a useless sack of flesh. The Death Eaters had questioned him for what felt like hours about his time with Potter, about what he'd learned of the Order, about their safe houses, their plans. They'd refused to answer any of his own questions about Lucius and Narcissa. His mouth was filled with cotton, his eyes heavy and dull, and every time he blinked, he saw Potter's face and wanted to puke.

He opened his bedroom door, the movement both strange and familiar. His room was dark, the curtains drawn against the storm outside, the air stale. He couldn't see very well in the dimness, but he could tell the room had been more or less untouched since his absence. Before, his mother had never allowed a single speck of dust to descend on any of the Manor's surfaces, had required anything broken to be repaired with the utmost urgency. House elves and servants had cleaned night and day. Draco knew the state of the Manor over the past year had chipped away at Narcissa's sanity; as the days of occupation had stretched on, he'd almost expected to round every corner and find her scrubbing at the bloodstains herself; a Lady Macbeth fallen from grace.

He cast a quick Lumos now, the beam shining over the wooden floor and the large four-poster bed in the middle of the room.

"Draco?"

Narcissa's voice, muffled and hazy from the direction of the bed. The sound jolted through Draco as if he'd been struck by lightning. He hurried forward, holding his wand up higher, and it glinted off something white—his mother's hair, long and tangled, dangling over the side of the mattress. "Mother?" Draco replied, his own voice barely more than a whisper. Relief flooded his body, warm and heady. He collapsed beside the bed, dropping the wand and scrambling beneath the blankets for Narcissa's hand. He found her fingers, long and identical to his own, her skin cold despite the covers. As he pressed her palm to his cheek, her own face slowly emerged, dark eyes blinking up at him in the weak light cast from his wand on the floor.

"You're alive," she said. Her voice was hollow and dull, as if she spoke from behind a pane of glass.

"I'm alive," he said, tears rising unbidden to his eyes. He was so sick of all these emotions flooding through him like a tidal wave, of being forced to show such weakness—but here, in the darkness of his bedroom, with Narcissa's hand clutched in his own, he found he didn't really mind. "And so are you."

Narcissa sat up, like a large plant unfurling from the soil. She had always been thin, but now she was nearly skeletal, cheekbones like knives buried beneath her skin and eyes sunk deep into her face. Her hair, normally a silky white, was matted and brittle, like worn yarn. "I thought I'd lost you, too," she said.

Draco picked up his wand and sat on the edge of the bed, his fingers still laced with his mother's. "Father, then— he's—"

"Dead," Narcissa said flatly, her eyes shuttering closed. "The Dark Lord had him killed after Potter escaped."

Draco had suspected, had heard the other Death Eaters hint at the truth, but hearing it plainly was an entirely different beast. Something like grief pricked through the surface of the relief that his mother was alive, through the regret he refused to allow himself to feel for Potter. "And you've been here all alone," Draco said, pressing himself closer to Narcissa. "I'm so sorry."

If Narcissa found it strange that her only son, a boy raised to be as greedy and selfish as his father, was expressing such deep remorse, she did not show it. She reached out and brushed the back of her hand across his cheek, her black eyes filled with a sadness he had never seen there before. "You didn't know," she said softly.

Draco straightened, searching his mother's face—at once as familiar as his own and yet entirely alien. Things had changed since he'd been gone, for both of them, and he was not sure what that meant for the two of them, for their relationship crafted on things unsaid and gentleness hidden by shadows. His mother had always tried to do best by him, as much as she had been able. Draco believed that, truly, but it was difficult to know if she would follow him down his path now, or if she would turn back—a Eurydice too frightened to leave the Underworld. He could continue to lie, as he had for years, about what he wanted, about who he was, but he was so tired, an exhaustion that sewed itself into one's bones. "I did know," he admitted, his voice careful. Narcissa raised her eyebrows, pulling her hand back, but he continued before she could reply, "When I was in hiding, I overheard Gibbons and Travers talking about it."

"I see," Narcissa said, her face now inscrutable, painted in darkness. "And why did you not come home?"

"Because Travers told me I was as good as dead if I did."

Narcissa cast her eyes towards the ceiling, her lips pursed. Draco waited for several heartbeats before she brought her gaze back down. "I do think they would have killed you," she said plainly, her voice crackling at the end with dry tears. "They've only kept me alive because of Bellatrix—not that she really cared what happened to me. But without your father, without you, I didn't much care myself if they killed me, as well." She stared at Draco, as if she could burn his face into her memory in the cold of his childhood bedroom. "It is I who am sorry, Draco."

Draco's lips popped open, just slightly. He was not sure what he had expected from his mother, but an apology was certainly not it. "For what?"

"For bringing you into this life," she said, an unexpected savagery in her voice. Her hands were fisted in the blanket now, blue veins prominent beneath ghostly skin. "For letting my prejudices and my family convince me this was the way things should be—this world of blood and fear."

Draco's heart skipped a beat, and he cut his eyes toward the door. "Lower your voice," he whispered fervently.

Narcissa swallowed, raising her hands to clench them against her chest, as if she could somehow hold in all the pain with her fists. "I've had a lot of time alone to think about my choices since they killed your father," she said, her voice no quieter than it was before. "I loved Lucius—but I hated him, too. He was never a good father to you." She smiled ruefully at Draco now, tears spilling from her eyes and down her pale cheeks. "I should never have let him break you down and try to build you back up in his image. But I've always been so feeble. And I just wanted to please him, to please Bella. You and Lucius were my entire life, and with him gone, I am left with only his legacy of cowardice, of serving this bloody war."

Draco pulled his mother's hands back into his own, resting them in his lap as he leaned towards her. "He's gone now," he said, and Narcissa flinched, but Draco pressed on, "He doesn't have to be your legacy—this doesn't have to be." He gestured around them with one hand, shadows dancing across his pale skin, across his scabbed knuckles and torn nails, across the Dark Mark carved into his arm.

"How could it not?" Narcissa asked, voice a strained whisper, black eyes chips of glittering onyx.

Draco swallowed, knowing he was teetering on the edge of something irrevocable, something that could very well end with his death. But he'd already known this is where he'd end up—hanging over a precipice the moment Potter had whispered his name in the dark like a promise. "Harry," he said, and Narcissa's eyes widened at the word, "I know how to help him win this war."