PARADE
Author's Note: This is a one-shot (of sorts), post-war, slash story. It is also Post DH, and is written for one, lauradumb, an Italian island of virtue who used to read, review and translate my stories. Feel the love, people. I hope you get this story Miss Laura, I didn't forget you!
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling owns most of the characters and places in this fan fiction. I am not fiscally profiting from this at all and I have no money. So don't sue.
"We can't all be heroes because somebody has to sit on the curb and clap as they go by." – Will Rogers
Draco hated the parades. Everything about them mocked him. He would stand with his wife by his side and he would sneer with all the hate he could muster. And yet he went every time. He would punish himself, re-open old wounds and refuse himself the relief he would feel otherwise - if time and absence were allowed to take their course.
The Heroes Parade. The Survivors Parade. Apparently he was neither. But this didn't bother him. He knew he was no hero. And how could he be a survivor when he was half dead anyway? Sometimes he'd repeat those thoughts to his wife and she would look at him with wide eyes and concern. And he would have to laugh and pretend he was joking. He never was and she never believed him. Sometimes he was able to forget though. Forget the war and all the things that happened after. And then the parade would come around again and he'd walk down there, with his wife and son and he would be full of morbidity and self-loathing but also anticipation.
The crowd breathed together, screamed together, danced together. They waved flags. The English flag, the Hogwarts flag, Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw flags. No Slytherin though, which was hardly surprising. Only two notable Slytherins had walked away from the war with any integrity intact. He was most certainly not one of them. This didn't particularly bother him either. Mainly because he refused to let it. He was what he was and what he was, was without.
Without him.
He was always the first one out. Draco knew he hated it. Draco knew because he had told him. He hated all of it. But he never said anything because people needed him to be a hero and he knew it. He was selfless. Draco knew this too. Everyone else's happiness always came before his own, and as a result, before Draco's.
He looked the same, sitting up on the floating barge. He always looked the same. Draco's heart thumped in his chest as the barge leveled with where he was standing. The crowd around him was going wild but he remained still, as did his wife who squeezed his hand. She misunderstood his feelings. She knew only what he told her and what he told her was usually lies or convoluted truths. He had been a master of secrets all his life.
Up on the barge, he gave the woman beside him, his wife, a half smile. Draco knew that smile well and a memory flashed in his mind. A humid night in September some years ago, filled with wine and laughter and moonlight shadows against the wall.
Draco longed for that night, and the ones that had come before and after. When the great Harry Potter would lie above him and he wouldn't be "Malfoy" anymore. He wouldn't be a Death Eater, or a murderer, or a betrayer. He wouldn't even be Draco. He would just be.
Completeness.
He longed for that too. Longed for it in the most painful way that the only way he could deal with it was to harden his heart and release his fury whenever he could. Usually on those unlucky people around him that he thought could take it. Sometimes Draco hated the world with so much fury he was sure he could bring it down. Crack the mountains, melt the ice, thicken the air. Every living creature would know his pain, his frustration. Every living creature would know his heart. And they would break and burn, just like him. They would know. They would understand. He would understand. He wouldn't look at him with distrusting, disbelieving, discontented eyes. He would see the truth and it would bring his heart home and there would be Draco's completeness again … what he's so longed for.
How had it all gone so wrong? Or had Harry been right all along? That it had never gone wrong, it just was wrong. Draco didn't know anymore.
He stared intently at the barge, his grey eyes burning metaphoric holes, willing him to look at him and his attractive wife and lively son, to show him that he wasn't the only one who could forget and move on. He didn't look though and Draco was devastated for a moment until he saw Harry's hands clench against his seat, his eyes determinedly looking straight and Draco was sure that Harry had stopped breathing.
He knew he was there.
Music vibrated through the concrete and Draco could feel it pounding inside his chest. It felt odd. It felt pleasurably full. It emptied a little at the sight of the small child sitting in his lap, looking over Harry's shoulder as the barge passed out of view. A sardonic, dark part of Draco wanted to hurt that boy. Hurt that other representation of why Draco could not have what he wanted. Messy hair, thin face. The boy didn't have the eyes though. That was something. A small reprieve.
That's all his life was now. Small reprieves. Emptiness. And always the memory.
Finis
Author's Note: Thank you to my beta, AbundantFear. My light, when all other lights go out. As Galadriel would say.