Title: Lost in the Shadows
Author: Stardrops
Rating: G
Genre: Angst/Romance
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Duh. And I should probably add that in a later chapter, the idea for the constellations and star spotting was borrowed from some of "Rigella"'s writing, which everyone should check out.
Chapter Four: The Real Draco
It was the first time since that night Perseus had died that Draco could talk about his demise.
The dark night surrounded the pair who sat on either side of the grave now so attractively decorated. An occasional hoot from owls perched on the trees disturbed the otherwise peaceful night.
Any stars and moonlight that had dared to show their radiance were covered by cloud now. Shadows moved across the yard as the moon occasionally fought to show itself, but otherwise, the pair was in very dim light. They could only just make out each other's outlines, and could not see expressions at all, except for the moments when the light shone through the clouds.
Delphine still couldn't believe there was someone in Hogwarts who knew Perseus as well. A soft coughing noise came from the side where Draco sat.
"So...why are you at Hogwarts now?" Draco asked quietly. Delphine did not answer straight away, and Draco hastened to add, "I mean, you don't have to say or anything, I just wondered why you had come from overseas to go to school here."
Delphine ignored the voice inside her head telling her not to tell him. She didn't see what harm this innocent boy could do.
"Well," she started slowly, "I used to live in Australia." Draco made a slight noise of surprise at this. She laughed thoughtfully. "Yeah, I went to a magic school there. I was living with my mother."
Draco was still completely confused. "Wait, so...why did you live in Australia with your mother if Perseus lived here with your father?"
"Because my parents had to separate."
Draco made a sympathetic noise. "I'm sorry."
Delphine took a sharp breath before going on. "Oh, no, they aren't divorcing or anything, its to do with the Voldemort thing."
Draco stiffened at the sound of Voldemort's name, and Delphine could feel him tensing through the darkness. "What's wrong?" she asked.
Warning himself to calm down, he quickly replied, "Nothing."
Delphine wasn't entirely convinced, but she let it go for the time being. "What about you? How did you know Perseus?"
A smile crept across Draco's face.
"His father worked at the Ministry, and was once involved in a case that my father helped out with. They became friends, and when Perseus was born, our fathers introduced us, so we were friends straight away."
"How old are you?" Delphine asked.
"I'm sixteen. I'll be turning seventeen in April."
Delphine nodded slowly. "So you were about a month older than Perseus?"
"Three weeks."
Delphine hesitated for a fraction of a second before asking, "D-do you mind if I ask you something?"
"Wow, sounds serious."
Delphine nodded.
"Sure, go ahead."
She took a deep breath. "D-do you know how...well...how...how he died?"
If she thought Draco tensed up before, it was nothing to now.
"Why would you assume I knew something about it?" he asked roughly.
Delphine was taken aback. "I-I just hoped that as his best friend, you might know...no one else seems to know. Even the Ministry just told us that his body was found a short distance from the station. They thought someone had used Unforgivables on him."
Draco put his head in his hands. This was going to be painful. Although, he reasoned with himself, he didn't have to tell her. He could pretend not to know.
But when she found out, she'd know he'd lied to her. Draco hated the thought of lying to the only person who understood him. More than that, though, it was the thought that she was Perseus's closest confidant, (apart from Draco), and she did not know the truth about his death.
So Draco agreed with himself to tell her.
He took a deep breath and lifted his head to stare silently into the center of the graveyard. Delphine could see his expression as the moon peeked out for a moment. It was guarded and closed off, dead looking. Delphine shuddered. She'd never seen anyone look so shielded. It was as if he knew something dreadful, and didn't want to tell anyone.
She was so close to the truth.
"Draco?" she asked as gently as she could.
He started as though he'd forgotten he wasn't alone, and then the guarded grey eyes turned to her. The moonlight picked up the urgency on Delphine's face.
He started to speak, but was cut off by a roll of thunder a fair distance away. Delphine looked up at the clouds, blocking out the moon once more.
"Do you think it'll rain?" she asked Draco. He shrugged, disinterested.
They sat silently for a few more moments, and then Draco began to talk again.
"He died in my house."
Delphine looked at him in surprise, though she could only see his figure, hunched over and holding his head in his hands again.
"My father killed him."
A gasp escaped unbidden from her mouth. Clapping a hand over it, she waited in shock for him to continue. He did.
"I was in my room, reading. I heard his voice downstairs, so I went down to say hello. And then I heard him screaming." Draco's voice broke and he stopped talking for a bit, trying to keep control of his emotions.
When he was once more able to go on, he continued.
"I ran into the kitchen to see what was going on, and I saw him curled up on the floor twitching as my father stood over him, laughing and pointing a wand at his heart. I knew right away that my father had found out about him, and I tried to stop my father killing him. But..." Draco's voice trailed off.
"But?" Delphine urged.
His voice was more lifeless than before when he uttered the next few sentences.
"My father used Avada Kedavra on him. He killed him in front of me." Draco held his left hand out to Delphine. She ran a finger lightly over the raised skin on the back of his hand, the scar. "That's the burn I got for lunging at my father, knocking him to the ground, and forcing my fathers wand to point elsewhere."
Silence filled the yard as Delphine digested these astonishing facts. She couldn't help feeling warmth towards this boy for what trying to save her brother. She could tell by his expression that he wished he'd been able to do more, and she did not blame him in the least for the death. Not for a moment did she doubt his story, because she knew no one would be able to lie about something this personal and deep.
"What happened then?" she asked warily, aware that this was a touchy subject for him as well as for her.
He sighed tonelessly. "My father threw me off him and threatened me with the Cruciatus curse if I did it again. By then, Perseus lay quivering on the ground, too weak to get up. My father had taken his strength away. He couldn't even get up and run!" Draco clenched his fists angrily at the memory. "And then my father killed him."
"Why?" Delphine asked before she could stop herself. She hung her head at once. "No, you don't have to answer that."
Draco answered as though he hadn't heard the second part. A rumble of thunder boomed from the sky above as he felt the first sprinkles of water falling down on their heads.
"Voldemort told him to." He gave a mirthless laugh. "And when Voldemort tells you to do something, you don't refuse him."
He felt tears coming from behind his eyes. Hearing movement in the darkness, he both heard and felt Delphine walking around to come and sit beside him. Blinking madly to stop tears from falling, he turned his head to face her. Her expression was hidden by the growing darkness.
"He just lay there, with this horribly blank look on his face. There was no chance of him coming back. He was dead."
A flash of lightning forked across the sky. The sudden light lit up Delphine's face, and Draco knew at once that she believed him and didn't blame him for anything. His heart gave a sudden throb, causing him to clutch his chest and gasp for air.
Delphine saw his face also in the split second of white lighting the sky. His face was no longer blank, but rather filled with emotion, and she could sense tears behind the shakes in his voice.
She put her arms around him as tears began to fall from her eyes, and he held her close to him as he let go his pain. Rain began to shower gently from the sky, tenderly hitting the ground around them and soaking their clothing within minutes.
His body convulsed as the pain was released. Shuddering, he felt throbbing from places inside him he didn't know could hurt so. Twinges came inside his temples, a sure sign that he would soon be surrounded by waves in an ocean of bottled up aches. He gasped before becoming consumed by the powerful waves of emotion overwhelming him. A range of feelings raged through him before the first tears dropped.
Then his heart began to open, pouring all the hate and hurt from the summer into his blood. Feelings surged through his veins from his toes to his brain, and as it engulfed him, he couldn't help being glad that he was here, with Delphine, instead of back at school alone.
Draco's body racked with sobs as he clutched Delphine to him. The first tears he'd cried since the murder. Every drop that fell was a shard of the bottled pain he'd felt since watching his father do such a terrible thing. His hair was soaked as he sat holding her.
Delphine also was crying, though not as much as Draco. She'd cried more in the past week when she'd been alone. Wondering if Draco had ever cried about it before tonight, she tightened her hold on the thin frame of the boy. He felt weak and too thin, like her. She wondered if he'd also not eaten much since he'd watched the slaughter. Judging by the slim skeleton she touched, she guessed he hadn't eaten much at all.
Draco felt himself go limp on her as he poured out all his emotion. It was hurting him so much to let anyone see him cry, but this felt somehow like fate had intended it to happen, as though it had wanted him to mourn with someone else who cared as much as he.
For so long, the two sat in the rain holding each other and at last, in the very early hours of the morning, they fell fast asleep on the wet grass.
* * *
Draco woke the next morning on a very wet surface. Rolling over, he wondered why his bed had suddenly seemed to have turn to a damp, cold surface, like an ice rink. Seeing a sleeping Delphine next to him, he remembered the previous night, and why he was where he was.
Sitting up very suddenly, he shook himself wide-awake. The decorations they'd beautified the grave with were still there. He looked over at Delphine again before rising to his feet and creeping as quietly as he could the way he remembered coming. Being here in daylight was too painful to imagine. As he began to move silently away, he looked back at Perseus's headstone. The vision of Perseus's face burned into his eyes until he closed them and let himself watch the image. When he opened his eyes, the image was still there in front of him, now completed with a body. Perseus was standing in front of him.
Draco reached out to trace the curves of that beautiful face and to once more touch the most influential person in his life. But even as his trembling hand reached out to touch the figure in front of him, it slowly weakened to become ghostlike and transparent.
His hand floated straight through the misty figure without feeling anything. And as Draco watched with saddened eyes, the vision faded away completely.
His insides flushed with cold and his heart seemed to freeze over as it did every time he thought about his best friend. Shaking his head, he began to run. He couldn't bear the pain any longer, he had to get back to the school and be distracted again.
"Draco?" he heard a sleepy voice say behind him. Delphine had woken. He slowed as he looked over his shoulder at her. She rose quickly and took a step towards him. "Draco, where are you going?" she called. He quickened his pace and ran all the way out of the cemetery.
Before entering the secret tunnel that would lead him back to the school, he turned once more and looked back at Delphine. She was running as well, though not nearly as fast as Draco had managed to sprint. She stopped a few metres away from him, as his deadened gaze was laid bare on her. It chilled her to the bone as he stared at her with such a dull expression after she'd seen so much pain and beauty in those soulful grey eyes the previous night.
She stood and watched him leave. But even he couldn't disguise the single tear that ran down his cheek before he disappeared into the tunnel, lost from view. And Delphine herself couldn't help shedding a tear for the boy who had so much locked inside that no one ever saw.
She realized that this was not the boy Hermione and Harry had talked about, not Draco Malfoy.
The boy she'd met and shared such a special moment with was someone more expressive, innocent and sensitive than the asshole they always talked about. He was a boy with secrets hidden so they could remain secret from the world, someone who hid his beautiful eyes and soul from the rest of the world because he was too frightened to show himself for what he really was.
That was the real Draco.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Okay...so what did everyone think? If you liked it or even if you didn't, please review! Reviews mean the story gets updates, no reviews means that it doesn't. So PLEASE review it!
Author: Stardrops
Rating: G
Genre: Angst/Romance
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. Duh. And I should probably add that in a later chapter, the idea for the constellations and star spotting was borrowed from some of "Rigella"'s writing, which everyone should check out.
Chapter Four: The Real Draco
It was the first time since that night Perseus had died that Draco could talk about his demise.
The dark night surrounded the pair who sat on either side of the grave now so attractively decorated. An occasional hoot from owls perched on the trees disturbed the otherwise peaceful night.
Any stars and moonlight that had dared to show their radiance were covered by cloud now. Shadows moved across the yard as the moon occasionally fought to show itself, but otherwise, the pair was in very dim light. They could only just make out each other's outlines, and could not see expressions at all, except for the moments when the light shone through the clouds.
Delphine still couldn't believe there was someone in Hogwarts who knew Perseus as well. A soft coughing noise came from the side where Draco sat.
"So...why are you at Hogwarts now?" Draco asked quietly. Delphine did not answer straight away, and Draco hastened to add, "I mean, you don't have to say or anything, I just wondered why you had come from overseas to go to school here."
Delphine ignored the voice inside her head telling her not to tell him. She didn't see what harm this innocent boy could do.
"Well," she started slowly, "I used to live in Australia." Draco made a slight noise of surprise at this. She laughed thoughtfully. "Yeah, I went to a magic school there. I was living with my mother."
Draco was still completely confused. "Wait, so...why did you live in Australia with your mother if Perseus lived here with your father?"
"Because my parents had to separate."
Draco made a sympathetic noise. "I'm sorry."
Delphine took a sharp breath before going on. "Oh, no, they aren't divorcing or anything, its to do with the Voldemort thing."
Draco stiffened at the sound of Voldemort's name, and Delphine could feel him tensing through the darkness. "What's wrong?" she asked.
Warning himself to calm down, he quickly replied, "Nothing."
Delphine wasn't entirely convinced, but she let it go for the time being. "What about you? How did you know Perseus?"
A smile crept across Draco's face.
"His father worked at the Ministry, and was once involved in a case that my father helped out with. They became friends, and when Perseus was born, our fathers introduced us, so we were friends straight away."
"How old are you?" Delphine asked.
"I'm sixteen. I'll be turning seventeen in April."
Delphine nodded slowly. "So you were about a month older than Perseus?"
"Three weeks."
Delphine hesitated for a fraction of a second before asking, "D-do you mind if I ask you something?"
"Wow, sounds serious."
Delphine nodded.
"Sure, go ahead."
She took a deep breath. "D-do you know how...well...how...how he died?"
If she thought Draco tensed up before, it was nothing to now.
"Why would you assume I knew something about it?" he asked roughly.
Delphine was taken aback. "I-I just hoped that as his best friend, you might know...no one else seems to know. Even the Ministry just told us that his body was found a short distance from the station. They thought someone had used Unforgivables on him."
Draco put his head in his hands. This was going to be painful. Although, he reasoned with himself, he didn't have to tell her. He could pretend not to know.
But when she found out, she'd know he'd lied to her. Draco hated the thought of lying to the only person who understood him. More than that, though, it was the thought that she was Perseus's closest confidant, (apart from Draco), and she did not know the truth about his death.
So Draco agreed with himself to tell her.
He took a deep breath and lifted his head to stare silently into the center of the graveyard. Delphine could see his expression as the moon peeked out for a moment. It was guarded and closed off, dead looking. Delphine shuddered. She'd never seen anyone look so shielded. It was as if he knew something dreadful, and didn't want to tell anyone.
She was so close to the truth.
"Draco?" she asked as gently as she could.
He started as though he'd forgotten he wasn't alone, and then the guarded grey eyes turned to her. The moonlight picked up the urgency on Delphine's face.
He started to speak, but was cut off by a roll of thunder a fair distance away. Delphine looked up at the clouds, blocking out the moon once more.
"Do you think it'll rain?" she asked Draco. He shrugged, disinterested.
They sat silently for a few more moments, and then Draco began to talk again.
"He died in my house."
Delphine looked at him in surprise, though she could only see his figure, hunched over and holding his head in his hands again.
"My father killed him."
A gasp escaped unbidden from her mouth. Clapping a hand over it, she waited in shock for him to continue. He did.
"I was in my room, reading. I heard his voice downstairs, so I went down to say hello. And then I heard him screaming." Draco's voice broke and he stopped talking for a bit, trying to keep control of his emotions.
When he was once more able to go on, he continued.
"I ran into the kitchen to see what was going on, and I saw him curled up on the floor twitching as my father stood over him, laughing and pointing a wand at his heart. I knew right away that my father had found out about him, and I tried to stop my father killing him. But..." Draco's voice trailed off.
"But?" Delphine urged.
His voice was more lifeless than before when he uttered the next few sentences.
"My father used Avada Kedavra on him. He killed him in front of me." Draco held his left hand out to Delphine. She ran a finger lightly over the raised skin on the back of his hand, the scar. "That's the burn I got for lunging at my father, knocking him to the ground, and forcing my fathers wand to point elsewhere."
Silence filled the yard as Delphine digested these astonishing facts. She couldn't help feeling warmth towards this boy for what trying to save her brother. She could tell by his expression that he wished he'd been able to do more, and she did not blame him in the least for the death. Not for a moment did she doubt his story, because she knew no one would be able to lie about something this personal and deep.
"What happened then?" she asked warily, aware that this was a touchy subject for him as well as for her.
He sighed tonelessly. "My father threw me off him and threatened me with the Cruciatus curse if I did it again. By then, Perseus lay quivering on the ground, too weak to get up. My father had taken his strength away. He couldn't even get up and run!" Draco clenched his fists angrily at the memory. "And then my father killed him."
"Why?" Delphine asked before she could stop herself. She hung her head at once. "No, you don't have to answer that."
Draco answered as though he hadn't heard the second part. A rumble of thunder boomed from the sky above as he felt the first sprinkles of water falling down on their heads.
"Voldemort told him to." He gave a mirthless laugh. "And when Voldemort tells you to do something, you don't refuse him."
He felt tears coming from behind his eyes. Hearing movement in the darkness, he both heard and felt Delphine walking around to come and sit beside him. Blinking madly to stop tears from falling, he turned his head to face her. Her expression was hidden by the growing darkness.
"He just lay there, with this horribly blank look on his face. There was no chance of him coming back. He was dead."
A flash of lightning forked across the sky. The sudden light lit up Delphine's face, and Draco knew at once that she believed him and didn't blame him for anything. His heart gave a sudden throb, causing him to clutch his chest and gasp for air.
Delphine saw his face also in the split second of white lighting the sky. His face was no longer blank, but rather filled with emotion, and she could sense tears behind the shakes in his voice.
She put her arms around him as tears began to fall from her eyes, and he held her close to him as he let go his pain. Rain began to shower gently from the sky, tenderly hitting the ground around them and soaking their clothing within minutes.
His body convulsed as the pain was released. Shuddering, he felt throbbing from places inside him he didn't know could hurt so. Twinges came inside his temples, a sure sign that he would soon be surrounded by waves in an ocean of bottled up aches. He gasped before becoming consumed by the powerful waves of emotion overwhelming him. A range of feelings raged through him before the first tears dropped.
Then his heart began to open, pouring all the hate and hurt from the summer into his blood. Feelings surged through his veins from his toes to his brain, and as it engulfed him, he couldn't help being glad that he was here, with Delphine, instead of back at school alone.
Draco's body racked with sobs as he clutched Delphine to him. The first tears he'd cried since the murder. Every drop that fell was a shard of the bottled pain he'd felt since watching his father do such a terrible thing. His hair was soaked as he sat holding her.
Delphine also was crying, though not as much as Draco. She'd cried more in the past week when she'd been alone. Wondering if Draco had ever cried about it before tonight, she tightened her hold on the thin frame of the boy. He felt weak and too thin, like her. She wondered if he'd also not eaten much since he'd watched the slaughter. Judging by the slim skeleton she touched, she guessed he hadn't eaten much at all.
Draco felt himself go limp on her as he poured out all his emotion. It was hurting him so much to let anyone see him cry, but this felt somehow like fate had intended it to happen, as though it had wanted him to mourn with someone else who cared as much as he.
For so long, the two sat in the rain holding each other and at last, in the very early hours of the morning, they fell fast asleep on the wet grass.
* * *
Draco woke the next morning on a very wet surface. Rolling over, he wondered why his bed had suddenly seemed to have turn to a damp, cold surface, like an ice rink. Seeing a sleeping Delphine next to him, he remembered the previous night, and why he was where he was.
Sitting up very suddenly, he shook himself wide-awake. The decorations they'd beautified the grave with were still there. He looked over at Delphine again before rising to his feet and creeping as quietly as he could the way he remembered coming. Being here in daylight was too painful to imagine. As he began to move silently away, he looked back at Perseus's headstone. The vision of Perseus's face burned into his eyes until he closed them and let himself watch the image. When he opened his eyes, the image was still there in front of him, now completed with a body. Perseus was standing in front of him.
Draco reached out to trace the curves of that beautiful face and to once more touch the most influential person in his life. But even as his trembling hand reached out to touch the figure in front of him, it slowly weakened to become ghostlike and transparent.
His hand floated straight through the misty figure without feeling anything. And as Draco watched with saddened eyes, the vision faded away completely.
His insides flushed with cold and his heart seemed to freeze over as it did every time he thought about his best friend. Shaking his head, he began to run. He couldn't bear the pain any longer, he had to get back to the school and be distracted again.
"Draco?" he heard a sleepy voice say behind him. Delphine had woken. He slowed as he looked over his shoulder at her. She rose quickly and took a step towards him. "Draco, where are you going?" she called. He quickened his pace and ran all the way out of the cemetery.
Before entering the secret tunnel that would lead him back to the school, he turned once more and looked back at Delphine. She was running as well, though not nearly as fast as Draco had managed to sprint. She stopped a few metres away from him, as his deadened gaze was laid bare on her. It chilled her to the bone as he stared at her with such a dull expression after she'd seen so much pain and beauty in those soulful grey eyes the previous night.
She stood and watched him leave. But even he couldn't disguise the single tear that ran down his cheek before he disappeared into the tunnel, lost from view. And Delphine herself couldn't help shedding a tear for the boy who had so much locked inside that no one ever saw.
She realized that this was not the boy Hermione and Harry had talked about, not Draco Malfoy.
The boy she'd met and shared such a special moment with was someone more expressive, innocent and sensitive than the asshole they always talked about. He was a boy with secrets hidden so they could remain secret from the world, someone who hid his beautiful eyes and soul from the rest of the world because he was too frightened to show himself for what he really was.
That was the real Draco.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Okay...so what did everyone think? If you liked it or even if you didn't, please review! Reviews mean the story gets updates, no reviews means that it doesn't. So PLEASE review it!