Draco went to Little Whinging, travelling by broom. At night he broke into a home and slept in a room.
The first time he did it he was careful to choose a home in reasonable condition. It was a big house on the corner of two streets. It had a beautiful view over sprawling suburbs, over a lake and fields in the distance.
Draco tried to simply open the front door, but it was locked. Later he learned that this was a good sign, that he should pick houses only with locked front doors. Unlocked doors usually meant the resident had been – and died - at home during the tempest.
At the first home however he managed to break a panel of glass and unlock it from the inside, turning the handle and opening the door easily.
It opened straight into the kitchen. Draco searched cupboards quickly, happy to find unexpired food. Two mugs were in the sink, mould clumped at the bottom of them. Draco tried to hurry past the fridge as he detected an unpleasant smell but lingered for a moment, mesmerised by details. A big red 'A' magnet. A scratch on the handle. The thick green texta somebody had used for the last note.
He turned away, went slowly down the hallway and opened a door cautiously.
The room inside was of medium size. It was mostly taken up by a bed, a desk and a bookcase overflowing with novels. The curtains were drawn but Draco opened them. He wanted to see the sun setting into the sky.
He avoided the books. Books were personal, books were private. Somebody had excitedly purchased each book, waiting during the long journey home to read it. He imagined it nestled in their hands, begging to be opened. When they reached their home, they would find a sunny spot, curl up and read it before carefully placing it upon the bookshelf...
Draco hated his imagination sometimes. This room had been somebody's. The bed was wonderfully inviting but once upon a time, somebody had spent every night there, dreaming and sleeping and lazing and reading and -
Draco abruptly slammed the bedroom door shut.
He slept on the couch that night.
He was careful not to look at things in homes after that. He avoided notes on fridges, he avoided books on shelves. He avoided opening closed doors, afraid of the memories of human beings.
He made a mistake on the fifth night. He glanced at a coffee table and paused to look at an interesting contraption. Then the picture distracted him.
It wasn't fine art. It wasn't a masterpiece. In fact, it was a fingerpainting.
As though hypnotised, Draco held out a hand slowly, palm downwards, until his fingertips gently brushed the bright green fingerprints in the middle of the painting. Such a tiny handprint! His own palm easily covered it. Such small hands immortalised in such bright colours...
Draco couldn't let himself cry. If he started now he'd never stop.
He leaned back instead and pushed the painting away roughly.
It took him precisely a week to arrive at Harry Potter's home. He had great difficulty finding it. He remembered his father showing him the address.
"Four Privet Drive, Little Whinging," Draco had read aloud. "Where's that?"
But his father had just smiled mysteriously and given one of his speeches about the Dark Lord and plans and things that Draco wasn't allowed to know. But Draco remembered later on his father coming home at midnight, torn and tattered, ranting about Potter's escape. The younger Malfoy wasn't stupid. He put two and two together.
But Draco had never imagined, not once, that one day he would be slowly walking up Harry Potter's driveway. The house was small and neat, matching every other house on the street. Draco had been expecting something special, remarkable. But there was nothing.
He tried the front door: locked. A small relief. He didn't break a panel. He'd made discoveries over the past week. Instead, he carefully searched under the flowerpots neatly lined by the door, finding the key under the third one along.
The key turned smoothly in the lock. As far as Draco could tell, the firestorms had not affected Little Whinging. The houses remained intact, the gardens green and wild.
He held his breath as he entered the front hall. What was there to be afraid of? Yet his heart still skipped a beat, his chest tightened.
Somewhere in the house a clock ticked, quiet but determined, its metal hands separating Draco's seconds.
He searched the kitchen, the dining room, the living room. All were tidy and neat. No notes marred the fridge, no mould grew in dirty dishes. The cleanliness and the ticking of the clock unnerved Draco. The house was a strange island of silent order in his world of chaos and ruins.
He went upstairs. The first bedroom was full of Muggle toys and contraptions. An unfamiliar school uniform was tossed carelessly on the bed, a letter half out of a pocket. Draco quickly retreated from the room. He'd learned to shield his heart from sentiment, from the memories and souvenirs of people long gone and lives long destroyed.
The second bedroom was certainly his arch nemesis'. There was nothing in it but a small bed, a tattered desk and the faint smell of owl droppings even after all this time. Draco stood by the bed. Whoever thought that one day Draco Malfoy would be standing in Harry Potter's bedroom? The thought made Draco want to laugh and laugh and laugh, but he didn't because it frightened him, thinking like that, and he wondered if he might go crazy.
Somewhere a clock ticked.
Draco found the camp in France two summers later. He had flown nearly everywhere now on his trusty broom. He sat atop the Eiffel Tower and penned a letter to Pansy:
Dearest Pansy,
Today marks the three-year anniversary of the Battle. Strange to think of the summers that I haven't shared with you now. Sometimes I try and remember our childhood, that day in the park...I used to remember it so clearly, but now I'm not so sure. Were you wearing a blue or red dress? Did we play on the swings or in the sandbox? The details just slip through my mind like water through my fingers. Maybe it's not a memory. Maybe I dreamed it, or maybe it's somebody else's memories.
Sometimes I feel like I'm holding all the memories of the dead.
Draco stopped after that sentence. He didn't trust himself to go on.
He gently tugged the piece of paper from the notebook and held it out.
He stood there upon the Eiffel Tower, a piece of paper in one hand, and let it fly from his grasp, let it drift over Paris. It was an overgrown city now, the Tower itself half-buried in ivy.
Draco watched as his letter flew into the darkening sky. It was his way of delivering letters. Somewhere out there in the great big universe, Pansy would receive his letter, blown into her hands by a summer-scented breeze.
"Wow."
Draco turned and studied the man. He was tall, middle-aged, flaxen haired.
"Wow," the man said again. "I didn't think there was anybody left to be found."
The man stared at him a bit longer. Draco said nothing.
"Sorry," the man said. "Shouldn't stare. It's just been a while since I've seen anyone new. I'm from the camp."
"The camp?" Draco asked. The man looked at him in concern.
"You alright? You sound awful. Are you sick?"
Draco shook his head. "It's been a long time since I spoke." His voice sounded strange in his ears, unfamiliar and rasping.
"Oh. Well. The camp, you know. Bunch of us survivors got together."
Draco stared blankly.
"Survivors," the man repeated patiently. "Some of us survived the tempest. We found each other and set up a survivor camp here in Paris."
For the first time the man seemed to notice Draco's Nimbus 2001 resting against the Tower.
"Oh, no," the man said wearily. "You're not a wizard, are you?"
Draco nodded. He didn't want to speak, didn't want to hear his dry, cracked voice.
The man sighed. "I'm sorry. It's a Muggle refuge only."
Hope died in Draco's heart. He hadn't allowed for much but the prospect of seeing, touching, talking to humans had proved too much and his heart had lightened for a second.
"You know about magic?" Draco asked softly.
"What? Oh, yes. Of course. We know all about your sort, you know. Some - well, most - of us Muggles are a bit angry, to be honest. Blame the tempest all on wizards and their interfering magic. But a few of us, well, we know you were just trying to make the world a better place. You're lucky you didn't bump into some of the other Muggles. Best to lay low, if you know what I mean." The man stretched out his hands, his palms facing Draco. An odd gesture. A gesture of forgiveness and apology too.
There was a long silence. The man shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot.
"Wizards?" Draco asked at long last.
"What?"
"Is there a wizard refuge?"
"Oh, right. I don't know. There's rumours, of course. Some say there's one back out east. Others say they're back at England. But honestly, I wouldn't waste time looking. I've never seen solid evidence myself."
"That's okay," Draco replied. "I have a lot of time."
Draco wondered later if it was a dream, meeting a middle-aged Muggle on top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris. Maybe the Muggle man was a ghost. Maybe Draco was just a ghost, floating through ruins of a broken planet, drifting alone through the carwreck of humanity. He watched the Parisian sunset. He wrote another letter to Pansy, carefully rolled it up and wedged it an alcove. He would come back for it one day and send it to her.
East. England. Which one? Any one. Draco had decades left, left to spend in this world without life. He could go anywhere. It hit him, hard as a punch to his stomach, just as painful and achingly brutal. Anywhere. He could travel anywhere in the world, and nobody would stop him.
That night, he took his Nimbus 2001 and flew into the stars.
North.
To Russia.
And how many months did Draco search the barren tundras, the fields without grass and forests without leaves? The blond boy lost count. Time was for people who needed it and Draco didn't need time. He had no meetings waiting, except perhaps that final great appointment with Death.
He travelled down to Asia, he island-hopped his way across the world. He couldn't remember years now, let alone months. He returned to Russia after a while although he didn't know why.
After a while it didn't feel like Draco was searching for people anymore. It felt like he was searching for a concept, a state of mind. He was searching for a memory, an idea, a feeling. He was waiting for the melancholia in his mind to stop, for the silence to lift, for the birds to sing, for the human voice to break into his heart like glass shattering upon stone.
But no voice came, no birds sang, and the melancholia deepened slow and steady like a child's lullaby.
He left Russia sometime in late May. It was the seventh anniversary of the Battle, if Draco had known the date.
He wanted to see England for the winter. He wanted to see the tulips bloom and breathe in the scent of closed rosebuds. He wanted to see green. His mind seemed slower as though the icy mists of Russia had fallen over his thoughts too, shrouded his memories and dreams from him.
It was a strange and meandering path to England and it led through Scotland. Draco didn't know why. Perhaps, in his subconscious, Scotland was always home. Hogwarts was home, no matter how ruined it was.
He arrived at Hogwarts precisely one week and seven years after the fateful tempest. He searched for the Quidditch field to land in but could not find it. After a while he realised that it was overgrown, that it was a mass of tall trees. The Forest crept steadily towards the castle. The lake had receded slightly. Draco imagined all the phials lying on the bottom of the lake, the phials from his godfather's classroom. Seven years ago he himself had drifted along the bottom of the lake, alone and dreaming of the universe while above him the dying gave themselves up to the furious sky.
The mermaids would still be in there somewhere, he imagined. He thought he had seen one or two passing shadows overhead when he himself had been submerged. He waited a while but there was no movement from the lake.
The castle was crumbling. Draco raised a hand and brushed it roughly along the beautiful ancient sandstone, feeling the grit crumble under his fingers.
It had been a bad idea to come back here, he thought. If he wasn't careful, he would enter the castle, wander from classroom to classroom, choking and dying on memories, torturing himself with the thoughts of beloved friends, cherished family, of times long ago when he had once been happy in a world filled with bright faces and futures filled with hope.
No. Death by heartbreak. Draco would not kill himself over the memories of it all. He retreated from the castle, mounted his broom and flew away into the evening sky, far away from his childhood, and he knew he would never return.
That evening he stopped in Wiltshire, although he wasn't sure if he wanted to go to the manor yet. He lay atop one of the ancient rocks of Stonehenge. He would sleep here tonight, he decided. The summer air was lovely and warm, gentle and without breeze. He could lay here and dream and not have to sleep in the rooms of dead people.
He gazed up at the stars, trying to remember the constellations. Orion. The great warrior. But the stars could be anything, really. Orion could just as easily be a horse or a heart or nothing at all, just a random spray of stars. Humans liked to make things out of nothing, to create. Humans made order out of chaos. A collection of icy rocks became a great warrior-hunter.
Draco closed his eyes and drifted away, sighing softly in his sleep every now and again. For a time he was peaceful, gaining precious relief from his empty world.