I watched as he sat by my best friend's bed, day and night, hardly resting, hardly eating, always mumbling to him. One year after the defeat of You-Know-Who, they were both still here. One a permanent ward, one a permanent visitor. Hermione stood beside me. I watched, I couldn't help it. It was like a drug. He so obviously cared so much for him. Perhaps more than my wife and I. After all, we were living the life he gave us the right to live. We had our child, we were married. 'Mione was Minister of Magic. And he... He was a permanent visitor. Never leaving his side.
Hermione finally broke down and cast a listening spell on the window.
"It is not uncommon to mourn something you've lost. Yet, I mourn someone I've lost, whom I never had to begin with. - At least not the way I wanted.
"After six years of animosity, I finally had you as a friend. And now, after three more years, I've lost you and I never had the chance to tell you how I felt, or what I wanted.
"Do you remember that day in Dumbledore's office? When he asked me, under veritaserum, if I would ally myself to the light, and I answered, "No"? He almost dismissed me right then, until I finished, and said, "I ally myself to Harry, and only Harry."
"You asked me several times after that why, and I never told you. I suppose now is as good a time as any. Many who allied themselves to you, and switched sides donig so, did it because they beleived you would win. Self-preservation, I suppose.
"I did it, because, win or loose, I wanted to be at your side, fighting to the death, and if necessary, protecting you with my life.
"But it was the other way around, wasn't it? You sacrificed everything for my life. Why?
"I remember a play you and Hermione dragged Ron and myself to. "A White Butterfly". It was about this little old woman who came into a department store's "Lost & Found" department looking for "a memory". And in the end, she made the manager, man with a misserable life, recall an event from his childhood. He had found a white butterfly in a lake, or a river, I don't remember which, and its wings were wet, and it couldn't fly away, and was dying. And he scooped it up, and let it's wings dry, and it flew off. And the old woman smiled, turned around, and left.
"It was a beautiful play. I've just come to the conclusion, however, that she was the white butterfly. She made him see the good in life.
"And like her, you are my white butterfly. You brought me to life.
"And you've flown off, now that your wings are dry. If only I could bring you back. No one here is going to. You've served your purpose for them, they don't care if you do more than sit in that bed and blink your nights away in an endless drench of cathode ray, like an animal tethered for their amusement. They don't care that you wake in the night, screaming from nightmares, none of us can understand. They don't care that you wake weeping, not remembering what made you weep, only knowing that it was devestating and horrific.
"I care. I'm here. I will do what none of the mediwitches and wizards can do. I will care for you. And I will heal you, and Harry, I will be your white butterfly. I will bring you to life."
And for the first time, in one year, I saw him stand from the chair. He bent over Harry's prone form, and gently kissed his lips.
And for the first time, in one year, Harry spoke without mumbling, or screaming, or jumbled sentences that made no sense.
"You're here," he smiled. "You're here, Draco. Like a... white butterfly."
finis.