by Lustreole
DISCLAIMER: Draco Malfoy and other Potterverse characters belong to J.K. Rowling.
RATING, GENRE: T, Angst/Drama
SUMMARY: A three-part story. After the death of someone he truly cared for, Draco learned what it was to make the right choice.
Thanks to zrginius from The HPN for offering an idea of how Snape talked Draco round to betray Voldemort.
CHAPTER ONE: CLOUDS
Draco Malfoy did not cry. He had done whatever he had to do. He had summoned some Muggles who would assist him in interring his mother, in a simple funeral. He even called a Muggle doctor once, and even modified the poor man's memory, in order to obtain what help he could provide for his mother in such difficult times as these. Yet Narcissa Malfoy was not intended for a living too sordid for her customary royal standards. As much as she loved her only son, after a week of grave illness, she surrendered to death. Draco had been clasping her hand for hours when it went limp at ten o'clock that night. Her body was getting colder and colder. Both the doctor and Draco knew Narcissa Malfoy had faded away from this world.
Under the gray and chilly autumn sky, Muggle villagers came to prepare the funeral. Several of their women changed Narcissa's shabby Muggle apparel into a lilac pelerine and bishop sleeved-blouse, a bequest from an old lady, believing it suited Narcissa's complexion perfectly. Draco did not argue. He remained silent and let the Muggles did their funereal work and advised him to "be strong", and "get going" since he was "young, with bright prospects". Draco merely nodded and stared unseeingly ahead.
The funeral was entirely plebeian and Mugglish. Everyone was in black, quite the opposite to wizards and witches in colorful dress at wizarding funerals. No tomb-creating spells. The Muggles dug with spades, lowered Narcissa's plain yew coffin into the ground. A middle-aged man dressed in white-collared black garb read a short eulogy about a woman he barely knew, and clearly was not the Narcissa Draco knew. Not the beautiful, headstrong, restless, sincere and loving wife and mother she was.
Ever since the Dark Lord discovered that an Unbreakable Vow was made among three of his followers without his sanction, Severus Snape was punished by being positioned in the West Country, in a mission with the most vicious of the Death Eaters. The Dark Lord obviously thought Snape was ineffective now, and therefore wished for Snape's death, either due to failure to comply with the Vow's clauses or internal frictions. Bellatrix Lestrange, once Draco's favorite relative, had escaped to save her own neck. The Death Eaters were still chasing her. Draco's father broke out from Azkaban and was murdered by his ex-comrades several weeks ago, disguised as common Muggle. Practically, Draco was the only one left to protect his mother, and he had to struggle alone to stay alive. Thus Draco and Narcissa deserted the Malfoy Manor and lived a nomadic life instead, whilst enduring weekly immense workloads and torture from the Dark Lord.
Before Snape was relocated, he counseled Draco to deliver information he obtained from the Death Eaters to the Order of the Phoenix. The Order was able to provide protection for Draco and his mother that Snape was not. Aside from that, they probably would trust Draco when they would not Snape. But Draco was too scared as well as too proud. It was treason, treason to the Dark Lord, and no Malfoy would shake hands with riffraff like the Order and Muggles. And so Draco hesitated, and hesitated, and hesitated to deliver the information.
Today, with his back on the yew tree at the parish's churchyard, Draco glanced at the Muggles before him, without any inclination to flinch or insult them, since he learned that they were as civilized as he was, in their own curious ways. He gathered last week that Snape, his protector and mentor, was half-blood. And so Draco was mingling with the kinds of people he formerly loathed, without planning it. He could not hesitate to contact the Order any longer. He had done enough damage already...
TO BE CONTINUED...
All right... That was the first chapter. Pretty short? The next chapters are longer... Or was that long already? Hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.