Narcissa heard Draco walking swiftly down the hall back to his chambers and opened the door to her parlor to stop him.
"Darling, would you come in for a moment, please?"
He had already passed the door and stopped in his tracks before turning to greet her.
"Hullo Mother, is everything alright?"
She said nothing, but gave him a small mysterious smile and opened the door to her quarters a bit more and stepped back so he could enter.
He walked past her into the small sitting area and shoved his hands deep into his pockets and furrowed his brow.
"Draco, sit down," she said as she laid a hand on his arm and gave him a guiding shove to the closest chair, "Now."
He sat and turned to face her, still frustrated that she was making such a to-do about coming in to talk to her. She never pulled him from the hall to come 'chat'. She took a seat in the emerald and cream winged back chair across from him, crossed her ankles properly and placed her hands delicately in her lap and waited for her son to look her in the eye.
Finally, his cool grey eyes found her face and then her eyes.
"When Ginevra wakes, I do not want you there."
She watched her son's face darken considerably, and then his eyes were a raging storm, almost black with malice. Don't even think about it, Draco.
"Sometimes I loathe that you are still Lady Malfoy, Mother," he hissed at her. Narcissa smiled and looked away from her son, unperturbed by his manic state.
She seemed almost at ease, drawling her words much like her son does when he is unimpressed. He started to open his mouth, closed it. Then opened it again-angrier this time. Closed it. She could tell he seemed to be fighting a personal battle and watched him for a moment as his inner turmoil splashed every emotion across his pale face.
"I'm proud of you. I've never seen you control your anger so well, son."
As soon as her last word was spoken, Narcissa's smile was wiped clean and instantly replaced by fear as a thunderous crash sounded from the opposite side of the expansive room.
An expensive vas sitting near the doorway slammed viciously into the wall and shattered into a thousand razor sharp fragments that splintered as it hit and slid across the hardwood floor.
"You spoke too soon, Mother."
"Very mature, darling."
She instantly stood, red in the face and flourished her wand, muttering a repairing spell angrily under her breathe. The vase flew back into place swiftly and was levitated back to its original position.
Draco squared his shoulders and his eyes burned a hole into her back. She's my wife!
"I appreciate your concern mother, but as she is my wife, it is my job to protect her."
"Protect her? How are you going to protect her Draco?" she looked more pissed than he had ever seen her, "she has short term memory loss!"
If he looked crazed before, there was nothing to describe the hate that was dripping from his aura. He wandlessly and wordlessly smashed the vase again. His mother wasn't startled or surprised; in fact it only made her more vicious.
"That was an antique!"
She stomped past him and didn't look back. Before she was completely out the door, she shot him a few parting words over her shoulder in a voice he had never heard before.
"It's time you came to accept it, son. Sometimes we can't save the ones we love."
Narcissa had already rounded the corner and was out of sight by the time Draco had fully processed what she said. I don't love her!
He could hear his mother's voice from down the hall call back to him.
"Yes you do!"
Narcissa Malfoy was born into a family of stubborn, hard-headed men and woman that are drawn to dark magic, raised to believe in the importance of maintaining pure-blood, and social standing. She always took what her parents had told her as law.
Until she married Lucius Malfoy.
It was very surprising to her that she took on the role as a wife and a mother so expertly... She always assumed she wouldn't like motherhood, ruining her body, and being a woman that took orders from her husband. But that was how she was raised, and that was how she lived her life. What she did not expect, was to enjoy it.
However, power does something to you. It eats away at the very fiber of your being and tried to suck you from the outside in. You will eventually be so powerful, that you become lonesome. No one is good enough for you, for your heart, for your children. Lucius let power eat away at him, and destroyed everything she held dear.
He killed her dream of a perfect pureblood family, but they were still elite. The Dark Lord still favored them because of Draco. How she wished they could be rid of the Dark Lord once and for all, but she could not let herself think these dirty thoughts. If she did, he might one day delve into her mind, and see it.
Tom would kill them all.
She walked to her new bedroom on the East wing and threw the doors open wide. She loved that she re-decorated the manor, it was so dark and dense before. Of course, the main floor still looked pretty much the same, incase that snak- The Dark Lord were to come for a visit.
It's all about appearances. How you look, not how you feel on the inside.
She simply did not want to be in the same quarters she shared with her late husband. She was still lady Malfoy, as Ginevra had yet to provide Draco with an heir…But she will.
Narcissa truly smiled to herself for the first time that day. Nursery's to decorate, grandchildren to spoil.
She gave a heavy sigh and called for her favorite personal house elf. This was the only elf that wore clothes at Malfoy manner, after the creature-Dobby passed away. She spoiled her, maybe because of the guilt that came with Dobby, maybe because she never had a daughter and wanted to dress a little girl up.
"Diamond!"
The same elf spun into focus in with a crack. She was wearing the same pink tutu and smiled up at her Master with doting eyes.
"Miss Cissa, hows can I help yous?"
Narcissa bend down to Diamond's level and smiled at the tiny elf, "I need you to do me a really big favor, Diamond."
The elf's ears stuck straight up at the prospect of doing an important deed for her Master.
"I need you to guard Ginny from Draco. When she wakes up, she will be very confused. I want you to give her this letter, and this package," she said handing the elf the items, "Do not let him into the room until she has finished the letter."
Diamond nodded vigorously and her ears flapped back and forth.
"Of course Miss Cissa, I is not letting you down!"
With a loud crack, she was gone.
Draco couldnt help but contemplate the words his mother spoke to him earlier. He thought of Ginny how she used to be, at Hogwarts..
They had only ever shared a single kiss, but ever since that day in the hall, he was kinder. Gentler. He didn't make fun of her poor family, or jest at her looks and bright hair.
He had gone soft.
Every since that moment she tried to befriend him. He never let her.
She was always kept at arm's legnth.
Always on his mind, but expressed that she was merely an after-thought. There was only so many times that she could try to show him that she wanted to be his friend, and get to know who he really was as a person. He could see that Ginny's life was far less perfect than she let anyone in was in love with Potter.
Bloody fucking Potter.
No wonder she was trying to befriend him.
Ginny Weasley was in love with Potter, and watched him love her best friend from the sidelines.
He assumed she knew, everyone who really looked knew. He dated Ginny and went through the motions, just as Granger dated Weaslby and went through the motions.
But to Draco it was all too clear.
Hermione Granger and Harry Potter had an uncanny connection. For claiming to be brother and sister they were almost too close.
They talked to each other with either eyes, like Granger had found some long lost secret language only she and Potter shared. Perhaps she had.
It was the only thing that could make sense. He remembered the day Ginny sought him out after lunch, her eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. He recalled that she stopped him in the hall and only said 'please'. He followed her into an abandoned classroom and silenced it with an imperturbable charm.
She dissolving into tears.
Ginny explained that her and Harry broke up. He remembered being harsh to her, and letting her in on the one secret no one else knew. Granger and Potter were fucking around long before Red grew a set. He smirked and expected her to cry out, and unleash her fiery fire onto him for being so crass and blunt with her.
But she surprised him. Like always.
She laughed. She was laugh-crying. It was bizarre and frankly scaring him a bit. Then his mind heard her repeat the same words that haunted him for the next year and a half.
"I know. No one else may see it, but I do. I think...I think I always knew. But I'm upset because I don't care..."
Draco remembered his heart soaring with those words, higher and higher in his chest until he felt like it might explode out the top of his body.
"I always thought I was in love with him, but I'm not... I find myself thinking of... well... thinking of you. Thinking of you more and more, Draco."
He laughed in her face, "So what? You love me then?"
"No, I dont." His heart sank to the lowest part of his abdomen once again. "I think about you because I know you are alone, just like I am. You may pretend like you are o-k, but you're not."
If only he could go back to that conversation and change the way he reacted, maybe she wouldn't hate him so much.
All he remembers was cold and calculated anger, "You dont know anything about me witch. You need to leave me alone. I don't bloody care about your little girl problems and wishes and dreams. They are all useless. The Dark Lord is going to slaughter all of your bleeding friends and family, maybe even you, Red," he was in her face now, spiting his words like hot fire and flame. She could feel the heat from his tirade licking at her neck, suffocating her with the images he was putting into her head, "And I cant stop it. I cant prevent it from happening. I will probably die right along side them."
Ginny was supposed to cower in fear. She was supposed to turn her face away, maybe hit him for good measure. But she didn't. What she did was a thousand times worse than anything she could've done.
She kissed him.
Full on the mouth. He never felt so alive, so much feeling and passion. She was so small but she held him in a vice grip, refusing to let him lash out at her, keeping him close to herself-like he would disappear if he let go.
Draco took a violent step back and looked into the small red head's eyes.
"Was I supposed to feel something?"
He watched her face fall and her heart break all over again.
She started to walk past him and stopped just beyond his shoulder, "I couldve been your friend. I could have taken care of you, Draco. But you don't deserve it and you don't deserve me."
Ginny didn't say another word, she simply walked past him and out of the room.
They never spoke again, after that.
He simply watched her from afar, and after ruining any chances of being in her good graces he vowed to protect her. She was on the Light side, and he was on the Dark side, they could never be.
He was a Malfoy, and she- a blood traitor. Worse than filth. No, they could never be together.
But he never stopped loving her.
Draco shook the memory from his thoughts and let out a heavy sigh. That is how she remembers me. As the bloody ferret boy. The enemy.
After repairing the vase as best he could, he sat down on the daybed in the parlor and closed his eyes.
Draco was racing across the wet grass the night of the battle. He needed to find Ginny.
He saw flashes of red in multiple places across the field. Damn. Why do they all have to have the exact same hair? He heard a scream and recognized it to be his Aunt Bella's dulcet tone. He never liked her much, she was reckless and wild. A young stallion, uncontrollable and dangerous...even to family. He never understood how she was born from the same woman as his mother.
Dodging hexes left and right he closed the distance that was between himself and his Aunt after seeing Ginny on the floor nearby. He felt a rage overtake his being once he realized she was dead.
He went to raise his wand to his flesh and blood but someone beat him to it. Bellatrix was knocked back several hundred feet, gashes cut across her middle.
'You cant be dead, you cant be dead' He kept chanting the phrase over and over again in his mind. He ran to the point where he had seen Ginny in the mud.
Further away he could see Bellatrix in a blood heap, her wand flown from her hand and resting several yards from her mangled body. She wasn't moving.
Glancing in her direction was a mistake... for before he could reach Ginny's side, someone had sized him up and was raising their wand against him. For the love of all that is right and wrong in the world, Potter!
"Get away from her! Not another step!" Potter shouted from across me. He was protecting Ginny.
Bloody righteous piece of shit.
He didn't have time to react.
"Sectumsempra!"
Draco barely dodged the hex that Potter had already used on him once before.
He rolled onto the ground and shot a disarming spell at the raven haired boy. Potter seemed to be taken off guard. Death Eaters don't disarm. They kill.
Out of nowhere Granger came into view. She was brandishing her wand like a pirate fencing. She cast a protection charm on me before Potter could understand what was happening.
He didn't have time to question how she knew it was him, he recalled seeing a small amount of recognition cross her eyes earlier in the clearing of the forest. He didn't have time to thank her.
A gold and silver spell went whizzing by his face, barely missing him and he could feel a white-hot brand sear his left cheekbone. He clutched his cheek and lifted his eyes in horror to see Ginny Weasley standing again, only to be knocked back down by the spell that grazed his face.
He watched her perfect mouth form an 'o' shape and her body fall limply to the floor.
Draco was by her side in an instant, catching her head before it hit the ground and caught a glimpse of her chocolate irises before they unfocused and he watched the life fade slowly from her eyes.
"Dont worry, Ginny. Ill protect you."
He was startled from his dream moments later by his house elf, Penny.
"Master! She's awake! Mistress is awake!"
