Before The World Was Made DRARRY

Chapter Fourteen

They arrived in a heavily wooded area, surrounded by trees and overgrown brush. It was dark here, darker than it had been when they left the teashop. Draco cast his eyes upward but found only speckles of sky through the dense foliage. The trees grew so close their branches were nearly entwined, reaching ever skyward to find a scrap of sun amid the rest. The ground was soft, squishy beneath Draco's feet, the earth well watered. The scent of peat, wet earth, and living wood flooded Draco's senses. The air was close around them, so thick and humid Draco could barely breathe, though he thought having apparated out of an intense snogging session might've had something to do with it.

"You all right?" Potter asked, his wand out but unlit.

It took him a moment, his hand seeking out Potter's, but something struck him as wrong about the forest. But it wasn't the trees that gave it away. It was the hedges.

"This isn't a forest," he said in a whisper. "Not a natural one, anyway. It's a garden."

Potter looked about them, searching out Draco's reasoning. The hedges were overgrown, untended, but there was still a clear line where once they had been trimmed into neat lines. The trees and plants had been left to grow wild, unrestrained by aesthetic, and left the surrounding with an oppressive quality. As though the abandoned place had become feral, angry.

"The grounds of an estate?" Potter asked in an undertone. "Why would your mother come here? Do you recognize anything?" Draco shook his head and pulled out his wand, making to light it. The darkness crept ever inward and a chill ran up his spine. Potter shook his head and tightened his grip on Draco for a moment. "Lumos would be noticed."

Draco fell silent, keeping closer to Potter as they made through the plants toward what seemed like a clearing. Beyond the edge of trees and bushes, they found themselves standing on the lawn of a massive and aging manor house. Built in the Victorian style, it drew a crooked line against the horizon, as though an aging courtier bowed and broken by the weight of the sky. None of the lines were clean, none held up to the scrutiny of time, and the colour that once painted the outer walls of the manor flaked and peeled. Several windows stood broken, half-open eyes gazing sightless outward at the world.

As he stared up at the ruined home, he was struck by a lashing of his grief, imagining Malfoy Manor in a similar state. Standing empty, hollowed out of family and meaning and all the symbols of its life, how soon would the Manor turn into this? A portrait of a dying home, a ruined family, broken history.

"Draco?" Potter asked, his hand moving to the small of Draco's back. The heat of it, pressed there and radiating through the fabric of his robes, brought Draco back. "Do you know this place?"

Eyes narrowed, he tried to see the setting as it once might have been. "I'm not certain. I don't know I've ever been here, but something about it does feel...familiar."

Potter cast a wordless spell and a rush of magic drew itself around the manor, like a great serpent, then flowed back toward his wand. A miniature model of the home drew itself on the air in front of him, with three tiny pinpricks of light in one room toward the back.

"Three people in that room," Potter said, swiped away the image with a simple motion. "Your mother and two others. Do you have any idea whose house this is?" Potter looked deep into Draco's eyes, searching for answers Draco didn't have. He shook his head, and Potter nodded once. He trusted Draco, and that thought nearly knocked Draco off his feet.

"Stay close to me, behind me, and keep your wand out," he said. Draco followed after him as Potter crouched low to pass one of the windows.

"I can defend myself, Potter. Perhaps you remember Dueling Club?" he said, more out of defense for his pride than anything else. Potter smiled, but it wasn't as unreserved as it had been.