Angels Guard
By Moste Piratical Ursh
Chapter ONE 1
- Fix You-
Draco stood and stared at Narcissa. Her skin gleamed palely white under the glare. Ash blond hair streamed down many times over dirty hospital sheets and onto shiny hospital floor - the nurses' sensible shoes make tiny click clacking sounds as they walk around her bed. Strip lighting is making his head reel. Eyelids flicker and his mother opens her eyes, attempts to look at him. Her face does not crack out of the death mask immobility.
He kneels on both knees and takes her hand in his own. It is fragile and cold, brittle like autumn leaves but white as alabaster.
A tear traces a single silent line down her cheek, the dewy moisture in its wake glinting and glittering.
Draco feels like his heart is being compressed into a tiny space just in the underside of his throat. He has never seen his mother weak like this. He knows she won't be here long. The bridge of his slender nose is aching, as though constricted; a pent up pressure of un-cried tears, burning in the corner of his eyes. He won't cry. He will make his mother proud. The longing ache of seventeen years: to make his mother proud.
Her slender lips, a bluish tint about them, mumble something indistinct. An incantation. Her voice no longer sounds sweet but bubbles and croaks. A trickle of blood leaves the corner of her mouth, to be wiped gently away on Draco's cuff.
Narcissa's hand contracts under his own, once; she is squeezing his own strong hands. Then it falls loose and limp between his cradling arms. Eyelids slide gently down over opalescent eyes for the last time, forever. Pale curved-moon slits reveal the milky whites of her eyes. She is perfect in death. He knows she is dead. Lost to him forever.
A silence has dropped over his world like a blanket. The antiseptic smell of the space around him fades. Even the room around seems clouded.
Slowly, he pulls aside the long streaming silver blonde hair, revealing the ugly red scars underneath.
Up and along the side and back of Narcissa Malfoy's neck sits the mark of her husband. Red, purple, brown and white scars that twist over the skin.
Draco strokes his mother's neck a moment, not crying. Then carefully he places her hair back and crosses her lifeless-cold hands across her chest.
A nurse coughs meaningfully, standing at the end of the bed with a clipboard, her eyes on the machinery beside his mother. Looking up, he sees a cluster of nurses at the end of the ward, staring at him avidly.
He stands up, feeling sick and dizzy. He has not eaten for at least two days. One last look at his mother, and then he strides from the ward, from the muggle hospital where the only person who ever loved him is lying cold and still on a dirty ward bed. And not coming back.
Many thanks to the wonderful beta Emily! She makes it readable!
And now for a little poem:
Roses are red
Parma Violets are blue
Do you love me, because I love you-
You know how I feel, and you know what to do!
R.E.V.I.E.W!
From your very own Ursh