Just Listen
Prompt(s): Scenes from a memory by
Challenge: The Art Club (On Hogwarts School forum)
Challenger(s): MissWitchx
Character: Lucius Malfoy
Disclaimer: All you recognize belongs to JKR.
Word Count: 232
Lucius Malfoy lay in his stinking, dank cell.
He didn't know who he was anymore, just knew one thing.
He was haunted by memories.
Memories that weren't his own.
The darkness always made it easier.
It made it easier for the sounds to creep through his fingers, the tortured screams of his fellow prisoners penetrating the heavy silence.
But it also made it easier for the ghosts to haunt him.
The ghosts of a past life.
A good life.
They chased him around and around, until his screams joined the others, echoing into the hated darkness.
Into the unknown.
Everywhere he turned, they were there.
His wife and son, their blonde hair mixing together to blur before his watery vision, as the tears began to run down his face.
He cried out to them, reached to them, but he could never touch them.
But still, they gave him no rest.
He wouldn't sleep, he wouldn't eat.
He just wanted to feel them in his arms again.
Just once more.
Yes, the memories of a forgotten man haunted him.
Even until his dying days, when all he could do was sob.
They stood above them as they watched the last seconds of life pass from his body, as he gave his last breath.
But then, looking into their cold, pale faces, he understood.
The only place he could find peace was in death.