AN: Written for the Great Maze Challenge on the Harry Potter Fanfiction Challenges Forum. My prompt was "You keep walking with your new companion when you hear the pitter patter of little feet. Look around for the source."

Narcissa Malfoy felt like a ghost.

Forgotten, friendless, alone, she roamed the hallways of her large, empty home, lost in her own world. No one noticed her. No one seemed to remember that she existed. True, she was still alive, but her old life, the life she had always known, was dead.

It was a sunny, windy October morning, her favorite kind of morning, but she stayed inside, kneeling at her bedroom window, gazing out at the lawn. She remembered running across it with Lucius and her sisters, all the games that they had played as children. She could still recall the sound of their laughter and their bright, sunshiny faces.

But those children were gone.

They grew up.

They grew up, she thought bitterly, and died, or disappeared.

There could have been others, of course. She could have made new friends, perhaps, or gone back to the old group. But it was different now, with so many of them dead or imprisoned. Besides, they had never been important. Snape, Rodolphus, Rabastan, Fenrir- none of them had ever been dear to her.

There were only four people she had cared about.

Sometimes, when the silence became too much, she would whisper their names.

Bellatrix.

Her older sister. Impetuous, wild, crazed, dangerous, but her sister nonetheless. Dead, at the hands of Molly Weasley.

Andromeda.

Her little sister. Sweet, lovely Andromeda would no longer look at Narcissa, no longer speak to her— and with good reason. Estranged, lost to her forever.

Lucius.

Her husband. Handsome, intelligent Lucius, the love of her childhood, her teenage years, her adult life— her only love, really. Dead, buried inside the walls of Azkaban.

Draco.

Her son. Her baby, her only child, her everything. He was the only family she had left, and yet he rarely spoke to her and never came to visit. He wanted to forget his mother, his father, and the people they had been. He had moved on, without her.

"Bellatrix. Andromeda. Lucius. Draco."

She whispered their names, as though it would bring them back, and then fell silent, listening to the emptiness of the house.

And then she heard a different sound: the soft pitter-patter of little feet.

A strange feeling of hope rose up inside of her. Shakily, for she was no longer a young woman, she got to her feet and went to investigate the sound.

Halfway down the hallway, she froze.

For a moment, she thought that she had lost her mind. It seemed to her that Draco was a little boy again, coming around the corner, walking towards her, with his blonde hair and wide eyes.

Then the little boy spoke.

"Grandma?"

It was then that she understood.

"Scorpius?"

"Hi," he said, staring up at her. "Are you Grandma?"

She smiled. "Yes, I am." With a slight wince of pain, she crouched down in front of him. "Is your Daddy here, Scorpius?"

The little boy shook his head. "Ella brought me."

"Ella?"

"Ella is my nanny. She's really nice," he said. "I told her I wanted to come see you, 'cause Daddy will never take me. But Ella doesn't know that."

"You wanted to come see me?" said Narcissa.

Scorpius nodded seriously. "I have my other grandma, but she isn't very nice. She smells funny. You smell nice."

Narcissa laughed.

"Can we play in the garden?" said Scorpius. "Ella said there's a garden. I like gardens."

Narcissa got to her feet. "Do you? I do, too."

Scorpius nodded. "I like the roses best. They're pretty." He held up his hand, and she took it. "Come on!" he said, pulling her down the hallway, and a slow smile broke across Narcissa's face.

At that moment, with her grandson, she didn't feel like a ghost.

She felt like a grandmother.

She felt alive.