The day I got out of Azkaban, my mother was there to meet me. She smiled, and when I reached her, I gave her the hug I had missed for the last five years. I had to let go then, because I couldn't cry.

"Where's Father?" I asked, curious as to why she had come alone.

"Your father is... unwell. He can't leave the mansion at the moment." She looked uncomfortable, but in front of the Ministry wizards, I didn't press her for details. After we signed the papers and I was given my parole rules, I took her arm and she disapparated us home.

I had missed Malfoy Manor.

The first thing I did was go to my rooms. I took a long steamy shower and shaved my face, then dressed again in suitable clothing- a three piece suit, minus the jacket and the tie. I returned to my mother in the dining room, and when she looked up at me, she laughed a little.

"Much better. You look like yourself." She rose and beckoned me after her, down to my father's chambers.

He certainly looked ill. He was simply lying in bed, reading a book. His face was whiter than usual, his face looked somewhat sunken. I stepped inside, and waited. My mother walked past me and sat down on the bed next to him, patting his leg.

"Lucius." She said lightly.

He looked up at me from beneath- glasses? When had my father gotten spectacles? And he smiled a little. "Son, home at last."

I bowed my head, unsure. "Father."

He beckoned me. "Come in, come in."

I came in, and pulled a chair over to sit in, he held out his hand for me, and I reached out and took it, expecting a handshake but getting pulled into a hug. When I was sitting again, I asked. "What happened to you, father?"

He looked to Narcissa, who shook her head. Turning back to me, he said, "Heart Attack, dear boy. Close call. Your mother was out talking to- someone, and I fell in the shower, the house elves found me in the nick of time."

Mother leaned forward. "We don't want to talk about us, let's talk about you. How are you son?"

I knew they were lying to me, hiding something. They were laying the endearment on too thick and hesitating over words, which isn't something the Malfoys did. We were a cold family. in fact, this was the warmest sit down I had ever had with both of my parents simultaneously. My mother was more inviting, but we still didn't talk much before I had left.

"There's not much to tell mother. Day in day out, getting your happiness sucked away by demons and listening to prisoners screaming their tortures in their sleep. After a while you learn to wake up, eat the food they give you, and go back to sleep. I, of course, relished the unhappiness, because it was feeling something rather than going numb and mindless like the lot of them." My father nodded his approval and turned to my mother, speaking to her low, so I tuned out.

Telling them that was the truth, though there was only one memory that had kept me from going completely mad. Her face when I was arrested, her beautiful, horrified face.

A face that had not come to greet me, and a face that hadn't been in our rooms. Her things hadn't been in our closet.

"Mother?"

I could tell she knew what was coming, and I dreaded the answer already. This was clearly the reason behind the outpouring of niceties. "Yes dear?"

"Where's Ginny?" I forced her name to leave my lips.

A glance, exchanged between my mother and father, told me everything. My father scoffed. He hadn't understood why I loved her in the first place, a Weasely. He had loved her too though, I thought, after a while.

"She left Draco. She left the night you were arrested."