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ii. willowed apples don't speak
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When they floo-ed back to The Manor, Draco made a bee-line for the couch. He carefully took off the pair of brand new glasses he wore, placed it on the table, then plonked himself unceremoniously upon the silk covered chair where he let out a long suffering groan. One hand dangled off, silver strands of hair completely out of order.
"Would you be dear and get me a Red Flower?" Florence handed him the bottle of wine. Draco took one, long swig--nearly finishing the bottle before Florence magicked it full.
For a moment, they settled in silence.
"Do you remember The Whomping Willow?" Strange thing to recount, but Florence supposed there were stranger things. He nodded.
"You saw me there."
"I did," Draco sighed. Head knocked back against the couch's arms.
When they were young, Florence had told him a story. Of a potions master chased by the ghosts of her past. She was kind, yet her death was cruel. Then, The Willow had been an enchanted tree that she cared for. Its anger destructive, voicing against the unfairness of the death. She had to be buried under The Willow, in order to weather the tree down. Florence was its first friend after many years spent in solitary--and Draco, the second.
"I missed her." Florence nodded.
(It had been another night. Draco was crying. The Dark Lord resided in his home, the very place he had left, and he choked up in fear. Florence was there. They couldn't do anything. Florence held Draco as he wept--The Whomping Willow wrapped her roots around them. They couldn't do anything. Florence and Draco fell asleep in her cradle untill the morning wind woke them)
"I didn't check her, after the war. She's still alive, aye? She couldn't be dead in the hands of," Draco waved his hands, nearly toppling over the bottle in the process.
"-some second-rated satan motherfucker." The liquor was getting into him.
"She's strong. Stronger than us. She could bodyslam Voldemort to hell and back and lived to tell us the tale."
But they didn't know. They couldn't. After The War, Florence whisked The Malfoys away before any more damage could be made. They were then under house-arrest. Then trials came and Lucius was sent to Azkaban. Draco was under surveillance and banned from using magic--not that Florence could easily hand him a loophole, or two--Then the executions. Lucius' head on a pike and the cheers--no death should be celebrated; they'd lost enough--gave Florence headaches. Draco went catatonic for few weeks before he drain out the cellar. Narcissa grieved, fell sick, and eventually withered away too.
By the time Draco pulled himself together from pieces, he wasn't even allowed to leave the Manor. Hogwarts was beyond their reach now. Florence couldn't even check if he survived.
