All the Ghosts are Screaming

40

Draco

He does not look like his father anymore.

For a moment, Draco thinks of turning around, because he must have been given the wrong cell number.  This man huddled in the back of his cell cannot be his father, not when the man he remembered had stood so tall, so proud (was hiding behind a man who was not a man proud?  Was he brave when he cowered under the lash of someone else's wand, when he let the walls of his own house become a cage?).  This man was a skeleton, his eyes sunken and the blades of his shoulders prominent even through his shirt, the skin stretched too tight over the bones in his face.  It could not be the man he remembered, and yet-,

"Dad?"  He forced himself to talk, the words being strangled by the pressure building in his throat and takes a step closer, hands wrapping around the bars.  He wants to yank it back, because it is so cold, the chill biting through his skin, but then the man in the corner turns toward him and he does not feel the chill anymore.

"Draco?"  He drags himself to his feet and has to hold onto the wall for support, moving towards the gate in great, lurching steps.  His hair falls around his face in strings, and Draco wonders why he has not bothered to cut it.  "Is that you?"

His voice is barely above a whisper, strained and cracking.  How long has it been since he had someone to talk to?

"It's me."  There are tears building in his eyes.  Draco had promised himself that he was done with tears.  "It's me, dad."

"What are you doing here?"  They are inches away from each other.  Draco could reach through the bars and touch him if he wanted to, but he doesn't. 

"I wanted to see you."  It sounds like a question.  "I got permission from the minister."

"Good of you."  His hands are trembling.  There are no dementors, but it is still not a happy place- its cold, and damp, the water from the waves soaking in through cracks in the stone and spilling out over the floor, the only comforts a lumpy mattress and threadbare clothes that do nothing to keep out the chill.  He's heard that a few have still gone crazy, left alone for as long as they are.  "But you shouldn't have come."

He turns his back on Draco, a move that would have once devastated him, but it does not have the same affect now, not when he is so weak from disuse that he stumbles as he moves back towards the bed, almost sending himself sprawling.  I did not deserve this, Draco thinks, looking at his father, looking at this cell, remembering when he sat in front of the Wizengamot and did not even fight, but nothing he did was bad enough to warrant living this kind of life.  But his father- Draco had long stopped making excuses for the things he had done.  If I were here, it would be because of him, not because of me.

"I wanted to talk to you."  He throws his voice through the bars, but Lucius does not move.  "To tell you things.  About- about Harry Potter."

There's a hiss from the cell beside them.  Draco doesn't flinch. 

"I've heard about you and Harry.  The guards showed me a newspaper clipping."  It's funny, how even when you are the better man, even when you are standing on the right side of the bars, how easily it is for someone else to make you feel small.  "The two of you at a dance.  Should I be expecting a wedding invitation any day now?"

It stings, but not as badly as Draco had thought it would.  "I love him."  The words buoy him a little.  His father moves, one jerk of the arm like he is reaching out to him, but does not look up.  "He loves me.  And I think we're going to be really happy together."

"You think that?"  His voice was silky again.  It was his fake polite voice, his talking to the minister voice, his this man is a mudblood and we need to put him in his place voice.  "You think that he could love you after everything you've done?"

"I didn't do much."

"You hated him.  You hated his friends, the Weasley boy and that little mudblood you were always so enamored with."  The hissing starts up again, louder, joined by someone else three doors down.  He wants it to stop.  "You killed Dumbledore, let death eaters into the school.  You think this will last, when he wakes up each day to see that mark on your arm?  Or do you try to hide it?"

He knows me, Draco thinks, dully, distantly, reeling a bit, because even though he had not known what to expect, he had thought that his father would be happy to see him.  But I do not know him.

"I don't use that word anymore,"  He says, keeping his voice light. "Mudbloods.  Very distasteful."

"I see."  He sounds beaten, like even that attempt at reclaiming who he used to be has exhausted him.  "A change of heart."

"I just wanted to tell you.  Before you really did hear about wedding invitations being sent and you don't get one."  Draco tightened his grip on the bars again, wondering why he had ever thought this man was so special, so scary, and why it still hurts, to see the man he had loved turned into this.  "Because if you're going to make me choose, dad, I'd choose Harry over you every time.  I wouldn't even have to think about it."

Harry loved him.  Harry saved him.  Harry is what kept him from finding a place to rot in this cell, when all his father did was bury him in more and more chains.

"Then maybe you should leave." 

His back is still turned to him.  Draco can't see his face, but that is okay.  He doesn't want to remember him like this.

"Maybe I should."  He turns to leave, and then hesitates, because he does not have to be afraid any longer.  "But I could come back.  Later.  When you've had some time to get used to the idea."

When you've had more time to be alone, is what he is saying.  When you realize that you really do miss me.

Draco waits a moment, but his father does not answer.  And that's okay.  Draco isn't the one that needs someone to care about him.