Hey all! So, a long time ago I accepted a 100 drabbles challenge and one of the prompts was "Rose". This is what came from that prompt, though not much else did. Perhaps I'll finish it some day. Anyway, here's the little ficlet; I figured I might as well post it. Hope you guys like it! Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
A Rose for the Dead
His father was undeniably an evil man. He had brought death and suffering to many and so, his death was both just and deserved. Yet, no matter how many times he told himself this truth, his treacherous mind flashed before him images of the kind and loving father he had once known. The same man who destroyed families and orphaned children, nurtured his own family and raised his own child. It was a duality that forever confused and troubled him.
How could a man gently tuck in his son at bedtime and murder an entire family a mere ten minutes later? No, he could not mourn the loss of this man, despite him being his father. The man had wrought far too much misery and destruction upon the world to warrant mourning of any kind – from family or otherwise. And yet, while this was true, Lucius had not been born evil, nor had he tainted all he touched; his mother and he, himself, were proof of that. And while he could not mourn his father's death, he could not celebrate it as others in his world did. The man was a monster to the world, but in the end, to him, he was still his father. So, while his friends went out for a drink to celebrate the anniversary of the death of their formidable foe, Draco alone declined, not that his friends would have been so insensitive as to have asked. Thinking these dreary thoughts, Draco stood before the barren expanse of land where the once Death Eaters were buried. The land was, like the corpses below, dead and devoid of life, colourless and bland.
Draco sighed sadly, though what he was sad about, he wasn't sure. For the loss of his father, or the lack of remorse he felt for the man's death, even he didn't know. Yet every year since the war, he returned, and he was certain that every year henceforth he would continue to return to this dreary gravesite.
He shook himself from his reverie and his melancholic musings. With a flick of his hand, he popped out of existence, the only trace that he had been there at all, the solitary rose that lay on the ground; one life among the despised dead, a rose that brought colour and purity to lifeless and tainted land.
A rose for the father he once had.
Thanks for reading! Leave a review, please. :)