My eyelids fluttered open and I groaned softly to myself, looking up at the canopy above my bed. I had hoped that it had all been a dream but the pounding in my skull and the blood I could taste in my mouth made me believe that I was probably wrong. My head felt fuzzy, as if I couldn't remember everything I was supposed to remember. I closed my eyes again, wishing I could remember why my reaction had been what it was. It was then that I felt the dark consume me again as I remembered. I had a twin.
I opened my eyes again, unsure of how long I had been unconscious. I looked at the clock, barely moving in case my head fell off. I know I'm just being melodramatic but that's what it felt like. It was hell. It was worse than being stuck in Professor Trelawney's room for an hour. I knew that I had been heading towards the stones at half past ten. Even taking into account the walk to the stones it could only have been 11 o'clock when I had passed out. My eyes flicked to the clock and I barely registered that it was half past three before I heard a soft tap come at my door.
"Come in." My voice was croaky and I was unsure if my visitor would have heard me through the thick oak of the door. Luck, it seemed was on my side. The door opened and my mother stood there, looking slightly sheepish as she came to sit beside the bed.
"How're you feeling Draco?" She smiled at me and I closed my eyes briefly, groaning slightly at the inanity of her question.
"How do you think I'm feeling? I've just found out that I've got a twin sister that I knew nothing about and promptly passed out and hit my head on a dirty great rock on the way to the ground!" I opened my eyes and scowled at her.
"I guess I deserved that. But before I tell you the whole story, I just want to let you know that it was your father's idea not to tell you. Not mine. I swear, if I'd had my way, you would have known from the beginning.
"Well, I didn't know. But I'm going to now. I'm sixteen years old. I need to know." I looked into my mother's eyes and saw so much pain visible therein that I almost repented and told her it didn't matter. But I would have been lying. It did matter.
"You're right. You do deserve to know."
I watched as she closed her eyes briefly and knew that she was shutting out the pain the only way she knew how, by blocking everyone out. Her eyes opened again and the pain that had been there before was gone. While my mother was still talking to me, I didn't really exist. Nothing at the present time really existed. She was back in the past.
"You're right Draco. You are a twin. Lyra was younger than you by six minutes. You were both so beautiful, so perfectly formed. Lyra had dark tufts of hair from the first day she was born. You were as bald as an old man. Her eyes were blue, with flecks of green. Your father and I were so happy. We had thought we'd never be able to have children. We'd been trying for three years before you came along. We were so happy." Mother smiled weakly and then continued.
"Now we had a little boy to carry on the Malfoy name and a little girl to keep our little boy company. And Lyra was so sweet tempered. She gurgled and laughed, while you were perfecting the Malfoy scowl. She would sleep peacefully every night. She fed as if there was no tomorrow." Mother's eyes began to water and her voice started to shake.
"Then at six months, while you were lying on your stomach wriggling like you wanted to crawl, Lyra couldn't even roll over. We tried so hard to make her roll over, but she just couldn't do it. And when we lay her on her front, she'd just lie there and scream. Our little angel would scream and nothing would stop her. We didn't know what to do. We took her to a doctor and he said that there seemed to be a problem but he couldn't tell what. 'Maybe she's just a late developer' he said. We believed him. Would that we hadn't. She didn't sleep that night, so we took her back to the doctor's for tests. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong. Three days later, she had hardly slept. We didn't understand what was going wrong. We went to another doctor, in the hope that he could find what was wrong. All he could tell us was that she appeared to have a lump on the back of her head, like she'd bumped it or something." Mother looked at me and sighed."
"He said maybe that was the reason she was ratty, maybe that was the reason she kept crying. We didn't know any better and just let her scream. We'd take it in turns to look after her, so that both of us could get our sleep. Your dad was working hard for the Dark Lord and I had another baby to look after as well as Lyra. I needed my sleep, as much as you did. We moved you into a room down the hall from ours and used a baby monitor in your room. Lyra still slept in the room with us. You started sleeping properly again. And then, three weeks after the screaming had started she fell asleep. There was no more snuffling noises, no more waking up. We thought everything was ok."
I saw the tears shimmering in my Mother's eyes, watched as they fell unheeded down her cheeks. The Malfoy's don't cry. Ever. But Narcissa was, sitting on the side of my bed. I reached out my hand and squeezed hers gently. She squeezed back and continued softly. "We woke up in the morning to hear you screaming, a horrible screeching wail. Maybe if we'd understood what was wrong with you we could have saved Lyra. But your father and I didn't know. We both came to you, briefly glancing into Lyra's crib. She looked so peaceful. She was still sleeping, or so we thought. You wouldn't stop screaming. I tried to feed you but you wouldn't feed. We walked you up and down your room and nothing would stop you screaming. It wasn't that you were crying. There were no tears. You were screaming like you were in pain, but we could see no reason for you to be acting like that. Eventually, your Dad suggested that we could take you into our room for a little while, thought maybe you were bored of your surroundings. We stepped over the threshold of the room and you stopped screaming. The second you were in our room, the screaming stopped. We took you out of the room and you screamed again." She sucked in a breath, shivering slightly.
"So we went back into the room and you stopped mid-scream. I jokingly said that maybe you just wanted to be close to your sister. So your Dad reached into the cot to pick her up. She didn't wake up. She was already cold, her lips were blue. She had been dead for maybe an hour. The coroner said that she died of cot-death, said that it had probably happened at almost the same time you had started screaming. We had just walked her, dismissed her as sleeping. The funeral was brief, a single hymn and a white rose placed on her coffin as she was buried in the family burial plot, underneath Stonehenge. She was my little girl, my tiny baby and I hadn't managed to save her. My little girl had died while I had been in the same room, mere feet from where she lay in the cot. I had been asleep while she died. I should have known something was wrong. I should have known that she was dying. I should have known but I didn't." Mother's eyes filled with tears and she shook horribly. I squeezed her hand again and she continued to pick at threads on my coverlet.
"Every year, on the anniversary of the day she died, I go to sit at her grave. I sit for hours on end crying, wishing she could come back, wishing I could have saved her. I call her name to the only person that will listen. God listens to me. Your father refuses to admit she ever existed. He stood at her grave the day she was buried and didn't shed a single tear. We came back here and I walked upstairs, sobbing and all your father said was 'Come now Narcissa. It doesn't do for a Malfoy to be seen crying.' I'm not made of stone. I'd just buried my baby. Seven months after I'd given birth to her. We had a wake after the funeral but I didn't go." Mother paused again as the sobs began to choke her. She sucked in a deep breath and then continued.
"Your father was excused from the Dark Lord's service that night but he went out and tortured Muggles while I stayed at home, holding you in my arms, sobbing my heart out. The house elves didn't dare approach me. I screamed at them every time they suggested putting you to bed. I didn't sleep for the rest of the month, held you in my arms all night long, watching you to make sure that you would be ok. I watched you breathe, just to make sure that you were still alive. I refused to let you go all day and all night. I didn't let go at all. I didn't dare. I didn't want to lose you as well." My mother stared at the bed sheet, refusing to meet my eyes, still holding my hand as the tears that she hadn't dared to shed in front of my father fell, sixteen years of pain reflected in her eyes. I squeezed her hand tight, and didn't say a word.
I shifted so that I was sitting on my mother's lap, the way I remembered doing as a child. I put my arms around her neck and she slid her arms around me, holding me close as she buried her head in my neck, the tears still falling. It may not do for a Malfoy to cry, but it doesn't do for a human being to be allowed to suffer. I held her close as the sobs started to subside and she started to hiccup.
Malfoy's are always right. That's what my father always told me. Malfoy's always do what's right. It was at that moment that I truly realised that my father was wrong. Malfoy's make mistakes. And my father's greatest mistake was to tell my mother that Malfoy's didn't cry. Malfoy's do cry.
And there were two Malfoys that cried that day.