On the day of Draco Malfoy's funeral, few mourned. A small cluster of people, former Slytherins, mostly, gathered around an nondescript tombstone. His parents declined to comment upon his death, shutting themselves in their manor and refusing to grieve. The ministry funded the funeral, the least that could be done for a war hero.
A small hero, he was, mostly ignored by the press and public. Though double agents were few, he had been such a minor death eater that it did not matter whether he died. Or so the press release had claimed.
Surrounded by Aurors, kneeling on dirt and mud and regrets, was Harry Potter. He clutched a bouquet of wildflowers, and looked into nothingness. Had Draco been alive, he would have refused the gift, sneered at Potter's inability to spend even a cent of his fortune. Draco didn't understand things like that.
Potter didn't cry at the funeral. No one did. It was quiet, Draco's acquaintances murmuring amongst themselves, death eaters and muggle lovers and everything in between gathered in one place. Draco had never told the Order which of his acquaintences were at the dark lord's side. He said it was the least amount of loyalty he could show. And so the Aurors simply stood uncomfortably, hands clutching wands, watching the boy who lived as if he would disappear.
He did not dissappear. He simply stood slowly, eyes still distant, and walked back to the gates, before apparating to an undisclosed location. His knees gave out when he landed, and he knelt again, on cold stone floors. Murmuring a prayer to a muggle god that Draco would have smirked to hear about, he clasped his hands loosely.
There was no one to view his breakdown, the tears slipping down his cheeks at what should have been just another casualty. Alone, he mourned the death of a boy he barely knew. He wondered whether Draco would have been good without the influence of his family. Better, for he was good. whether he would have been great.
He wondered if he could have loved Draco. And then he didn't wonder, because he knew, even as a Malfoy, as a worshipper of heritage and pride, Draco had been great. Draco had been loved. In the rushed intimacy of wartime relations, Draco had shone in his arms. And then he had been torn away. Then...Then...Then nothing. Then another morning, without Ron, without Sirius, without Ginny and Dumbledore and Snape. Then another casualty.
And this time Harry Potter broke. This time he screamed, screamed for an end, begged for Voldemort to finish him off. Said he couldn't hold on anymore. He waited for hours, on that stone floor, waited for a miraculous death. And when night fell, he stopped waiting, and brought it upon himself.