So now it's Draco and a little OC of mine. I honestly couldn't think of a cannon character to fit this job... Lol. Shameless plugging. Enjoy. Bear in mind this is an un-betaed draft

I've got this feeling that there's something that I missed
(I could do most anything to you...)
Don't you breathe

Draco Malfoy - 1.32 am, Wiltshire

Draco stared up at the sky. Just visible through the wisps of scattered cloud was a half moon, hovering silently. He squinted up, the ice-cold night making the craters and surface of the satellite seem almost blue.

I'm sure it used to be bigger when I was younger, positive.

Perhaps it was because he hadn't looked at the sky, night or day, in such a long time. Too long his aching shoulders had been hunched over parchment, his hand numb from holding a wand tightly and his throat dry and dead. Night after night he had sat on this very balcony, on this excuse for a chair, and smoked away his life, simply staring at the walls around him.

His gaze wandered down to the ghostly illuminated gardens. Hedges and flowers had been washed in grey and shadow, changing only in the intensity of darkness. But even in this beautiful pale light, his vision ended where a line of elegant ash trees stood, their long shadows making his moonlit world disappear.

A bank of cloud rolled across the light in the heavens.

He only had the energy for a grunt.

Draco longed for the balmy summer nights in which he and, very occasionally when a cigarette was in his hand, Amelia spend out here, basking in the warmth of the world around them. They would watch the birds returning home into the very trees that now ended the sight of his winter vigil. But she would sit on the edge of the stone around the edge of their balcony, making him ill when he remembered how high they were and only making her laugh. But that was months ago, mere memories. So much had happened since then. It had been weeks since they had been properly together, as a couple, as a family.

This summer, perhaps, he would teach Aidan to ride a broom. He was just old enough now for a child's one but still begged and begged his father, Draco, to take him out and soaring around the grounds.

Draco sighed, exhaling the last of the smoke.

One day at a time.

He would be grateful to be sitting here, like this tomorrow night, temporality thrown out of his own house. A thought he never expected to cross his conscious mind.

Being out here was the least of his worries at the moment.

Nothing, he knew, knew, would ever be the same ever again. He hadn't been so sure about anytime like this in a long time.

Flicking the butt over the side of the wall, he settled further into the chair and under the magically warm blanket he had with him. The chair groaned and creaked accordingly but stayed put. This year's summer would be most welcome.

Tomorrow morning called to him and his gaze drew uneasily towards the eastern horizon. Still and absolute darkness still controlled the landscape. He closed his eyes and sighed. Merlin knew if he would ever see another night at all, let alone from his bedroom balcony… or anywhere else.

But the view was the least of his worries.

Trouble was he had so many worries, tangled and mixed up inside him, that they had now intertwined and massed into one nagging, wiggling feeling. Each time he would try and pick one of the threads of unease out, it would remind him of another, which then lead onto another until he had finally learnt, for the sake of getting any kind of rest, to leave them well alone. At the moment this sensation was at the pit of his stomach, churning up the dinner he had forced down his throat.

And it was beginning to grow now, with the clock chiming an hour at least twelve hours later than he would have liked.

Feeling those worries rise up to his throat, he began searching for his pack of cigarettes, gradually becoming frantic as each pocket, no matter how deep his looked, or how desperate he was, and found nothing.

"Shit."

He'd left them in the bedroom, on Amelia's dressing table, behind a bottle of perfume that she never used.

But as he started to stand up, shrugging off his cover, he found his wife in the doorway. Standing silently, watching him with a small packet in a hand of one of her folded arms.

"You'll be wanting another then, I suppose?"

Draco tried to smile. Only his lips wouldn't move. His mouth also refused to make a discernable noise, until,

"I need another one."

A smile spilt onto her face.

Something that may have been relief, dread, or simply his knees finally giving way, made him sit back down. Amelia had never liked his smoking; despite the fact that she used to be just as bad as him. But recently, instead of opening scolding and defacing is packets, her face would go blank as soon as she found any hint of cigarettes. Somehow, he longed for the out shouts and little arguments they would have and he wished she would just yank the carton off him and hurl it over the wall. He needed someone with energy to talk to him, he needed something he could hold onto tomorrow – not the pained and forced blank looks his company had forced on her.

But when he looked back at her, she was closer, offering the pack to him. Her expression remained unreadable and, despite past experiences, Draco took it off her quickly. As soon as the box was in his hand, and a little before that if he was honest with himself, he knew it was empty.

At this point, Amelia grinned spitefully. "And oh dear… you ran out."

He frowned at her with as much energy as he could muster. She was not a very nice person sometimes. After barely a few seconds he looked away, back into the night. Energy had failed him.

The floating tangle that was his worries seemed to now expand, filling every part of his body. He would be grateful when it finally took over what little of his heart remained, so the nagging in the pit of soul would disappear.

"Could you find me some?" he asked, his voice rasping. "I can't let myself think at the moment. They're the only things that helps…"

The malicious twinkle disappeared immediately from her eyes.

"I shouldn't have done that," she whispered, sitting gingery on the arm of the chair. In spite of her attempts at being delicate, the chair still made an awful cacophony of noise. She laughed quietly, and he found himself smiling, suddenly glad she was here and pulled her onto his lap.

For a few blissful moments he remained leaning against her back, watching the patterns behind his eyes dance, smelling her hair and feeling her breathe quietly. Then her shoulder blade knocked into his face as she began to turn around.

"I know what this must be like for you."

It was only a simple statement, and he knew she really was trying to help, but he had to fight back his embittered annoyance. Draco found her hand. He stared at it for a moment, trying to decide what to say. "I don't think you really do."

"Then help me understand-"

"How can I!" he snapped, pushing her off him as they both stood up. "How can I explain what it's like having this-" he pulled up the sleeve of his left arm up roughly, his nails inadvertently catching his skin. His voice had turned into a low hiss "-embedded inside you? I just can't. And to be perfectly honest, I cannot understand why you would ever want to understand."

Amelia's eyes had barely flickered onto his arm. She knew well enough what was there, and what had been there intermittently for years, permanently for the last few weeks. That ugly black mark staining their lives. For the rest of the time, she met his gaze, even when she had backed herself against the wall. She didn't speak for so long that he managed to calm down, taking in deep breath, coming alive once again.

He sighed and half stumbled away from her, feeling his head reel. Somehow he managed to fall into his chair rather than on the floor.

"I'm sorry," his muttered as his rubbed his face. "I don't want… need… bad memories of you… us…"

Perhaps he imagined the sniff, but he felt Amelia at his side. She didn't sit with him this time, but simply knelt down to his level and pulled his hands away from his face. "Think of something else. Remember last year, in France? Away from everything…? Just me, you and Aidan."

Guilt washed over him as he had forgotten completely about it… The hazy days on deserted beaches they had spent together when they were younger, their first family holiday with Aidan – days of making magic sandcastles which could actually fit any number of small boys in comfortably, trying to catch fish with little hands and lazing on balconies, on much warmer nights, with his new wife… He swallowed nervously after a moment. Their last day spent at the seaside, teaching Aidan to swim by a small jetty and dropping him into the water when his dark mark flared up painfully… And then, finally, arguing with Amelia and Apparating back to England anyway.

He didn't want these things pressing into his head, squashing out information that he was already desperately clinging onto.

Amelia's soft voice filtered into his awareness. "…At least go and see him. Why do you refuse to see him? He adores you–"

"Stop it. Just don't say it."

Draco prayed to whatever Merlin, God or whatever higher being there was that Amelia's face really wasn't betraying what she thought of him. He felt her lips brush his hand before she stood back up. He caught her hand again, stopping her walk away.

"I can't think about anything," he murmured, suddenly unable to look at her. "Because if I do, I'll have to think about everything. Everything I've done and will do. Please… I can't see him."

A small smile appeared on her face and she kissed him briefly. "Please come to me before you go."

He watched her walk back into their room, leaving the door open. The curtains were being drawn out by the light breeze that had snuck up on him, barely audible above the colossal rustling of the trees behind him. Breathing in deeply, he hoped to find some scent of spring. There was none – the air remained bitterly cold and devoid of life. And then his sight was drawn away from the warm, yellow light of his bedroom and back to the fading moon. Black was beginning to turn into navy as he lit the cigarette that had been placed into his hand.

In-between drags, he studied the item in his fingers and absently hoped it would be these that killed him. Half finished, he flicked it over the side of the balcony, and into the grey shadows below. As he watched the small orange light disappear below him, and the white lights above him wane, he wondered vaguely what could be, would have been, like. Perhaps another child; a girl for Amelia to dress in ridiculously pink outfits (she had looked at them longingly enough in the shops), more nights like these, or maybe nothing but four grey walls for him.

But, as he stood up and ignored the eastern sky, a future life was the least of his worries now.