Draco Sinister

Chapter Fifteen - Mattress of Wire

So say goodbye to all those ne'er do wells

Smile in religion and then smile farewell

Your magic doesn't need the failing spells

Of those that never understand

And manners, they will find no place

With those that have no saving grace

With you I see the irony

Of anyone who has no faith.

Aztec Camera, "Mattress of Wire"

***

On the evening before Harry Potterś seventeenth birthday, not two weeks after his last glimpse of Salazar Slytherin, Draco left the Manor, where Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Narcissa were playing Exploding Snap by the fireplace, and went and sat on the hill overlooking the house where they had buried what remained of his father. The night was beyond clear, as if someone has stretched a sheet of glass across the sky, through which the starlight shimmered with a diamond brilliance. It had rained that day and all around him the grass was wet, each blade glittering like a nail driven into the ground. Above him rose the mausoleum erected to the memory of his father. It was hewn black onyx and its unreflective surface seemed to draw in the darkness of the night.

He wasn ́t sure what he had hoped to accomplish by sitting here all night; whether he was saying goodbye, or had hoped to have some communication with his fatherś ghost, and what he would say to that ghost if it appeared. Nobody had tried to stop him from going; they were all being so careful around him these days, as if he were something terribly fragile that might break. Not that all of them who were at the Manor now - himself and Harry, Hermione and Ginny and Ron, Sirius and Lupin and his own mother - hadn ́t been through the same nightmare, but he had been its focal point. The darkness had touched them all, but only Draco had nearly been swallowed up by it, had been inside it, had been the darkness. The Dark Mark was gone from his arm, but the memory of everything that had happened still burned against the back of his eyes. There was still so much to be sorted through, to be understood, to be forgiven and to try to forget. He found himself restless, wandering the dark halls of the Manor at night, startling his own reflection in mirrors, looking for answers and finding none.

Harryś birthday was tomorrow, and there would be a party, and he did not want to go. Sirius had wanted to make it a joint birthday party for the two of them, but Draco had refused. He didn ́t want a party. So there had been a quiet dinner for him the week before, and he ́d been given presents, which initially he didn ́t want either.

New dress robes from his mother, a black leather FiloParch from Hermione, and Ginny had given him a book. Charlie Weasley had sent him a glass figurine of a dragon that spit Undestructive Flames at the top of every hour. And Sirius had given him a sword to replace the one the demons had taken back - it wasn ́t a Living Blade, of course, but then nothing really was. Harry had rather unexpectedly given him a scabbard to go along with it, which was enchanted with a protective spell that kept the wearer from bleeding when wounded. He supposed Harry felt that he had seen enough blood, his own and others ́, to last a lifetime.

Draco rose to his feet and looked down at the Manor, gray in the dim light. Familiar. The enormous terrace running all around the tall square stone house with its mansard roof. At each corner they small round towers with tall narrow windows in them. Good for Banishing hot oil onto advancing enemies. Shadows moved behind them now. He thought of the others, sitting before the fire, calm in each otherś company. The firelight on Ginnyś hair, Hermioneś laughter, Harry quiet as always.

Enough. Draco brushed the wet grass from the knees of his trousers, and made his way over to the side of the mausoleum. Into the side of it block-carved silvery letters had been cut: Lucius Malfoy 1958-1997. Arte Perire Sua.