Warnings: In which I basically have fun with parenthesis and completely ignore the epilogue in my own way.
Disclaimer: Harry Potter is not mine. Obviously.
He had it all once. At least, he thinks he did (once upon a time, maybe). Others might have pitied him, living in that dreary house with a father who was never home and a mother who did her best but could never do enough, though she tried, she did, he thinks with all the innocence of a boy who misses his mother.
The only person who was ever always genuinely kind to him was Dobby. It was something he'd taken for granted as a child, even as he grew older. There would always be someone to love Draco Malfoy. He knew it in the same way a bird knows to fly north each spring. Dobby, like so many others, would always remain still in time. They would never change.
The thought makes him laugh now, staring down at words carved into stone. He shouldn't even be here; he's caused these people too much grief already, he doesn't need to cause more. The Weasley woman doesn't need anymore troubles to add to her still reddened eyes, which are still not as red as the hair of the son she lost.
Still. He knows that they know he is here. The curtains flutter every so often, not by the hand of the nonexistent wind but by those of somewhat suspicious viewers. They don't understand. He's Malfoy, they insisted, still insist. He's up to no good, as always.
Here lies Dobby, a free elf. A culmination of lost things, he now knows. First the father, then the mother, then the elf. He'll be next, and though he's already so lost inside of himself he knows there is always farther to go down the path of despair. He's not quite to the point of suicide, not yet anyway.
There is a soft sound from the small cottage, and he knows one of his erstwhile watchers has come to chase him away. With a tired sigh he turns slightly, ready to acknowledge whoever it is, apologize, and be on his way. They'd never believe he didn't mean harm.
"Hello Draco," she says, and it's the Weasley woman, thinner than he'd remembered. She offers him something that might have resembled a smile (once upon a time, maybe) and lays a staying hand on his shoulder as he attempts to stand. "It's all right," she says. "I understand. Take your time."
Such simple words, not well thought out but as sincere as she can make them. "What would a blood traitor know about anything?" he says, and though the words are hurtful he utters them so tiredly there is no malice. They are mere definitions now, lines drawn into the sand. He says them as matter of fact as anything. The sky is blue. The grass is green. I don't know how to live unless I'm fighting.
She inclines her head in acknowledgment, but does not rise to his bait. Part of him wishes she would. He knows how to deal with anger, fear, hatred, antagonism, war. He does not know how to deal with the warm embrace she draws him into. He is too tired to fight this insidious attack at his heart.
Pressed against her warmth, he realizes that compassion is something he never learned. They don't teach you that in Slytherin, he wants to say, but there are no excuses for his ignorance. A sudden memory of insulting her in order to hurt her sons flashes into his mind and he wishes he could take it all back, start over--Narcissa Malfoy never gave hugs like this--but there is nothing to rebuild amongst the ashes.
"I wish I could turn back time." It's one of the most honest things he's ever said, and how strange that he would say it to someone who is practically a perfect stranger. Maybe it's that he wishes she wasn't. And he can feel her take a deep breath, feel how she searches for words of comfort that don't exist. He knows they don't exist, not to her. This woman never had cause to regret her entire life.
"We can't," she says at last. The words are only another nail in the coffin so he can't bring himself to feel anything other than numbness. She sighs. "When I walked into the Burrow for the first time after that night, I thought, 'If only I had a Time Turner.' But you and I both know it wouldn't have made a difference." There is a different kind of regret than his own as she continues. "Still, all I wanted was one more day. Just one more day with my son. I would give anything to have him invent one of those silly joke products or play a prank on me or even just see him try to pretend to be George one last time."
She lets him go then, and he reluctantly moves away and pretends not to see as she wipes moisture from her eyes. The chill of the night air brushes against his skin stronger than ever before, all the colder for the warmth he has discovered.
"How do you make up for an entire life?" he's amazed his lips are moving; he's not sure if she really can answer something like this--he's pouring his heart out for the first time in his life and he's not sure he can stop--but there's something in this tired, frail woman's eyes that tells him she knows something about life that he missed along the way.
"I'm not sure," she says, and purses her lips in thought. "But you can start with this, with us."
He's dumbfounded as she moves to her feet and then reaches out a hand for him to take, because surely she can't mean… but she does. She does. He finds himself unceremoniously tugged to his feet, and then being pulled towards the brightly lit cottage. "What?" he stammers, stumbling slightly, but the look she suddenly pierces him with seems to reach into his very soul. They are strangers, he knows. Opposites, really, yet in the end they are the same. They are human.
"You can't turn back time," she elaborates, and though the reasoning of her unconditional welcome escapes him for the moment something within him recognizes her sadness. "But you can change the future."
He turns away to look at the white slab memorial. The word 'free' seems to leap from the stone, and his eyes focus on this for one long moment before he turns again to peer into the haggard face of Mrs. Weasley. Looking into the sweet, loving eyes of a mother missing her son, he realizes there are all kinds of grief.
Dobby was the first person to ever love him exactly as he was, though he didn't realize it until it was too late. Mrs. Weasley, he knows without a doubt, is the second.
And it is that knowledge at first, and that tiny glimpse of endless sorrow that makes him follow. As she holds the cottage door open for him, he hesitates. The light that bathes the room in a golden glow illuminates common furnishings and soberly clad people, nothing too intimidating in comparison to what he had come home to each end of term, yet he can't quite convince himself to enter. He can't turn back time and make all of this right again.
He takes a deep breath and looks back at the mother. She smiles so gently and nods for him to go ahead, oblivious to the hushed whispers of those already in the room, and he can't help but agree.
He knows now, a lesson engraved into his being with loneliness and death and war, that he can't change his past. But as he takes the first step into the cottage by the sea, Draco Malfoy thinks that maybe he can change his life anyway.
The certainty comes as sure to him as the arm Mrs. Weasley places around his shoulders, sure as the chipper voice she uses when she says "Draco's agreed to join us for supper!" It is the voice of welcome. It is the clatter of doors and windows flinging open. It is the resonance of light.
It is the sound he has been waiting for all his life.
He might have rejected this (once upon a time, maybe) but now he follows her in, and tries to change his future.