House: Slytherin
Category: Short Story
Prompts: "If I could turn back time and undo what I've done…" (Speech)
Characters: Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Draco Malfoy, Lucius Malfoy, Narcissa Malfoy,
Word count: 2897 (Excluding Author's Note, but including entire Short Story and Title)
Summary: She begged him to paint her, and when the decision comes for him to do so, she becomes lost. Destined to live the rest of his life in Azkaban, Draco Malfoy uses his brush for embodiment in the desperate attempt to make her beauty last forever.
Rating: T
Author's Note: I came across a bit of a problem when trying to begin this work. The words weren't coming out exactly how I wanted them, thus pushing back writing by a couple of days. When I finally figured out how to word things, this is how everything transpired.
Originally, I had picked out a piece to showcase, but found that it didn't quite fit the theme of the work. At the end, the description comes from a time that I feel that Draco and Hermione could have easily shared. Late at night, both trying to look over their notes. In one perspective, Hermione is biting her lip in a way only Draco could have noticed. In the other, Draco is looking at her that makes her shy.
Note: I wasn't aware that these submissions could only be 1-shots, so for the sake of staying within the guidelines of the competition, I submitted this work under one 'Chapter'.
As always, enjoy
-Carolare Scarletus
Painting of Mona Lisa
A well-spent day brings
Happy sleep, so a life well
Spent brings happy death
-Leonardo Da Vinci
The first time that she walked through those doors, he was about to stand up and hightail it out of the office as soon as the chance presented itself. The second she came, he almost lost all control and threatened to lash every single one of them until they had no choice but to postpone the meeting. By the third, he was adamantly convinced that he was been pranked and that there was no way in Merlin's beard that Hermione know-it-all Granger was his defense lawyer. That this bush-haired menace could give him a refutable hand-up against his trial.
"Alright, Granger. I'll bite. What the hell do you think you're doing?"
"Besides trying to do the noble thing and help your sorry arse?" she snipped, stomping her feet in the way that reminded him of their time in school. Her eyes were in that dead-set and sort of non-negotiable level. Draco never noticed before, and perhaps it was because he was too busy hissing insults every which way, but she did have gorgeous eyes. "I'm trying to help you win this case. This is about your freedom, isn't it and not some deep resentment that you still might hold for me?"
Draco moved his head so fast that his hair literally blinded him. Rubbing his left eye, he said," Yes, it is. And, don't think I still haven't forgotten-"
"Zip it." She uttered the command in one singular line of dark menace. He bit his tongue from saying any more. "It is within my professional stance that I advise you to not speak unless spoken to. I will be doing the talking as of now and all I need you to do is sit there and answer. Think you can do that for the next hour that I have you?"
Frowning, he nodded once and allowed her the decency to continue.
That was the first time he fell in love with the brute of a know-it-all.
"What is your deepest desires?" she asked. "If you could have anything in the world, what would it be?"
Draco looked at her for a moment before conjuring enough of her infamous courage to answer. It's been several months in this newly found courtship, and he was just beginning to feel comfortable enough to open up to her. Of course, he stilled snapped at her. Still raised his voice if he found that she was infiltrating upon his fragile tolerance of security. Instead of doing precisely that, he thought. And, as he thought, he imagined:
Pressing his lips against hers and discovering just how suppliantly soft they were. Her hair becoming entangled in his hair as he pressed his body against her, stopping all movement of time as the universe married them together.
He took another drag of his fag, a habit that he'd taken up years before this night ever came into conjuring. It was an image that's been haunting him, but he wouldn't dare tell her that. Instead, he offered an almost comical answer that made her cry sweet tears of joy.
"Money can't buy everything, you know."
"Well, it most cases it can." He waved his hand in the air, watching listlessly as the smoke from his fag became one with the dewy morning. "What about you, Granger? Besides becoming a Nurse at Saint Mungo's."
Hermione leaned back against the wall. Her eyes searched the clouds almost as if the answer laid there. In an instant, she was looking back at him, but he wasn't looking at her. He knew exactly what her aspirations were. She was quite the Gryffindor to be ensnared by a snake.
"Forget it." He told her in a low, troubled tone. Draco finished smoking and extinguished it before standing up. Restlessly, he inclined his head towards her in a condescending sort of way. "I can't be like you Gryffindorks. There isn't a single good cell in my body."
"That's not what I'm trying to say."
"That's exactly what you're saying, Granger. Don't try to make a fool out of me."
"Draco, please-"
"Shove it!" he snapped, his threat as severe as the look he was giving her. He was tired of people judging him, of people looking at him with such animosity that it practically poured from their invasive stares. The judgement, in the past, had never been easy. With her it was bearable, but just barely. A day never went by when he wasn't reminded of the choices he made, the wrong he had caused. For a fleeting moment, Draco wished it hadn't been him. He wished he hadn't been born to a monstrous and abusive father. If the scars on his body was any fulfillment, the Dark Mark surely symbolized his long expired treatment. It was time to go. "Forgive me. Just…"
"Forget it." She said in place of him. She had stood up too, but this time, it was clear that she had had enough.
Licking his lips, Draco looked at her pleadingly. When she didn't budge the first time, his heart speed into a whirlwind of wicked devotion.
She couldn't leave him.
She was the last person he had.
"Hermione, I-"
"Shove it," she spat the exact same words that he had told her. This time, there was actual venom in her words. He looked at her despairingly as she treaded the dark winding staircase of the tower. He followed closely behind her, his casted down in shame as he tried to ascertain his next move. He couldn't let her leave until he at least apologized to her. Even with that, he'd still feel unbelievably guilt, almost as guilty the first time he called her a Mudblood.
That, if anything, had been the rudest awakening that anyone could have given him. And, if it hadn't been or the slap that she had given him, he'd still be the nasty little prat that he's made everyone come to believe.
She was the only one who accepted him for who he was, no questions asked. Who took him in his time of need, who figured that something was worrying him when his own body and mind couldn't figure it out. To let her go now was akin to death; he needed her to survive, and her mere memory would not be able to suffice.
"Granger!" he yelled, taking hold of her upper arm and whirling around to look at him. His heart dropped at the tears that trickled down her face. Again, she was avoiding his gaze and it was only when he pushed her against the window of the last step of the Astronomy Tower that he could earn her attention. "I told you to wait!"
"And, I told you to stop!"
Silence fell between them.
He supposed it wasn't right to get upset at her for something he did. Granted, she knew that he didn't like when she just walked away without giving him the decency to explain her feelings. It wasn't right on either of their parts, and he only wished to make amends.
"I'm tired of this, Draco." The use of his name did unspeakable things to him. "I'm tired of trying with you. Merlin be, I feel like I'm not getting through to you at all! You're about to be sentenced to death for what you did and you won't even listen to reason!"
"How do you know that?"
"I spoke to one of the board members." She swallowed the last bit of bitterness that remained and said," If they don't find that you were under the Imperius, they are going to sentence you to the Dementor's Kiss. This may very well be the last conversation we have together before they come for you and I don't want it to end like this."
"Who says it must?" he asked, looking at her now like one of his muses. Unbeknownst to anyone, he was quite the talented painter. Although she's only seen one painting of his, one of a flower embedded between rock and steel, Hermione had to agree that there was something exceedingly special about his usage of paint and brush "I can make this moment last forever."
"What do you mean?"
"Let me paint you." He whispered, ready to poise his paint brush in the ethereal lake of her beauty. "Just this once, before you're lost."
Chapter Two
When the news of her death came to him, Draco remembered exactly what he was doing.
His studio was adjacent to her library. It had been a non-negotiable deal between them shall either of them find themselves in need of the other's company. Sometimes, even when it was most connivant to them, they would magick the wall between their worlds and combine in one pivotal moment of separation. It was only when that wall was raised that he felt complete. When the prophet came that morning, having stayed up all night worrying about her, it came crashing down.
"I'm so terribly sorry," his mother's voice broke the silence as he read over the article for the fifth time in a row. He had called her over and she came flying into the heat of his hearth to console him. It was upon his own disbelief that his eyes were starting to fail him, and his mother's words were becoming a permanent hidden discreetness to which he took no pleasurable part in. What he was reading just couldn't be true. "There wasn't anything they could do." There were even tears in her usually unreadable eyes, the same sort of worry she presented him during his trial.
He looked at her once, everything falling down on top of him all at once.
And, when it came time to finally lay her to rest, his mother came to him and wept along with him.
"You can't keep blaming yourself for what happened, darling." His mother consoled him again.
Draco looked at her and nodded. ""If I could turn back time and undo what I've done…"
"There wasn't anything you could have done."
"I could have saved her!" he bellowed in drunken rage. "I could have been the one to take her place! They were angry at me, not her!"
All his mother did was look at him with the sort of pitiful expression that he'd come to accept before reality literally broke apart.
Draco looked at what he done.
The face was nothing like hers. It was too round and blotchy in some places that it made him laugh at the thought that he had anything to do with such atrocious strokes. Everything was wrong, even right down to the faintest of freckles. Her eyes, had they been as lustrous as he remembered them to be, were hidden behind a cloud of falseness. In utter rage, he raised his wand and pointed at the piece, configuring the canvas so it read nothing but a blank temptress. From there, he began to paint again, this time determined to paint her from memory.
It's been months since her untimely death, and he was no closer to embodying her essence into memory than he was finding religion. He had taken up drinking as a sort of rehab, but it could only numb so much.
Dropping his arm to his side, glasses sitting askew his nose, he looked up and racked his hands through his beard, a trait that he's come to enjoy despite the memories it evoked.
Dragging his fingers through his hair as the clippings of the Prophet fluttered around him a dance that he was too tossed to memorize, he came to the dreadful conclusion that made him start drinking in the first place. Her pictures were scattered everywhere that his hands could touch- the walls, the clippings and ragged magazine articles. What little visitors he had then were instructed to bring whatever supplies that they could managed to feed his growing obsession. No matter how hard he tried, immortalizing her was an excuse to make up for all the years that she could have entrusted him with.
Draco has never known such tragedy.
It all started just shortly after the fall of Lord Voldemort, and it was no what most would have imagined. His family had fallen so hard from grace that they literally landed themselves in the pitiful pools of mud in which they believed all things aside from themselves belonged. His family had taken quite the beating, and after the proceeding hearings, the only name that had been cleared was his mother's, leaving him to serve a fully twenty years in Azkaban for his crimes against the Wizarding War and his part in Dumbledore's death. Despite the irrefutable evidence that he had been employed by the Imperius Curse. He had even taken the Death Mark unwarranted by his own actions. His deceased father had auctioned him off and when he was to blame for what happened at the Ministry, he was the one to take his punishments. It had been ordained by Voldemort from the very beginning.
He hadn't known discreet hatred until his own father whisked him away to be brutalized by the least human creature deployed by Voldemort. Greyback was notorious for turning others. He was a brute, psychopathic beast that infiltrated Hogwarts soon after he lead the pack of wild slaughterers into the school. Believing in a now elementary cause such as blood purity was one of the greatest mistakes in his in life, aside from ever allowing himself to love.
Her face was that of pure white, coated in faint freckles of innocence. Shaking his head, he pleaded that her face would go away, but it was hard to run away from someone when they were quite literally painted onto his wall. He envisioned the same tormented picture when he was asked what his deepest desire was, and it was now that he realized he should have told her truthfully that it had been her- it was her all along.
Not even hours later after his proposal he was dragged from his small cot and sent to an office at the ministry. Taken into custody, he begged for release but none was granted to him. Instead, he flew to the walls of Azkaban, where, he remained until the final notice of his fate was delivered to him with a single word of guilty imprinted upon its face. He thrashed about, spoke violently of the injustice, but every threat fell absolutely on deaf ears. Even the Dementors didn't seem to take well to his anguish, despite the fluent succession of nutrients at their feet.
He had one chance, and he blew it
Suddenly, he was back in his cell. The demented workings of his brain were wreaking havoc on his still fragile body. He soon found himself completely unresponsive to the simplest of tasks.
He let the corrosive liquid set fire to his throat. In his haste to drown in sorrows in bottles of Firewhiskey, he almost forgot why he come back to this damnable gallery. He was no longer in his cell, but in the space he once shared with Hermione. All around him were hundreds of paintings, sketches and pursuits of the one lease of inspiration that he had obtained during his time during the war. In his attempt to die before the Dementors had a chance to end his life for him, a great multitude of compassion if he had the privilege to know it, Draco tossed the finished contraband against the wall, slid down to the floor and wept.
In one irrefutable moment, his thoughts were sent back to the clippings. They were the reason why he was so set on destroying himself.
He was no longer being held captive in the rotting cells of Azkaban. If it hadn't been for one fiercely persuasive girl, he would have surely died along with them. He could give a thousand reasons why he deserved this treatment, though, he was preserved to believe that if he begged long and hard enough, this dream would eventually rose him and he would find himself back inside the school. Wand raised, pointing at the one being other than her that made him feel remotely human.
"You still paint her?" his mother asked one day when she came in to check on him. There was no jealousy hinting in her words, just curiosity. "I don't recall her having straight hair."
"She doesn't," he murmured softly. "That was a mistake."
"Fruitful wishing?" she offered with a chuckle.
"No," he told her in a lying tone, "just spite." He took another drag of his bottle and sighed.
"Come Draco, I think she's waited enough."
She spoke of the very first painting he ever did of her, and it was one of his most prized treasures of his life. Although engaged, he still saw her as the jewel of his eye and the single impression of his passion. He painted other things, of course. But, she was the only person he's ever painted that he ever given life to.
Bracing himself again, he raised his paint brush to the wall once more, this time completely set on capturing her for one final time.
To this, he became to draw. Because even in death, she would live through his paintings.