A sharp rapping on his office door disturbs his thoughts. It cannot be one of the elves, since they would just come directly in, and he carefully takes his head out of his hands and smoothes down the few, unruly strands, making a mental note to destroy whichever of the house elves allowed a guest into his house and then his office unannounced and after the day he's had.
"Come in," he barks reflexively, his throat scratchy, his eyes so dry he can hardly blink.
Blaise Zabini is standing in the doorway, looking ill at ease. He ought to, Draco thinks maliciously. Slytherins are ambitious and cunning and cutthroat when the occasion requires it, but they also have a fierce honor system among them. There are things that you do not do under any circumstances, and this is something that falls into that forbidden category, Draco knows, angling his eyes up and away from the photographs on his desk. He thinks about throwing Zabini out on his ear, but when the dark-haired man looks back at him without spite or pity or triumph in his eyes, he finds himself nodding instead, letting him enter. Zabini looks like Draco Malfoy with Harry Potter's hair, and if he weren't so furious (heart-broken, a soft part of him is thinking), he'd be laughing himself sick over the irony. Is that why she did it? Or did she do it because Zabini is one of the few people Draco can actually speak to anymore, one of the few people from his childhood who didn't turn their back on him when he turned his back on the Dark Lord?
Zabini's gaze falls unerringly on the photographs. There is no surprise in his eyes, but since he's here at all, Draco doesn't expect to see any. He wonders what Zabini will say to make the images of him fucking Draco's wife go away or get better. There's no getting better from this. Draco would kill him now, Azkaban and all, if a part of him didn't also know that it is as much his own fault.
He couldn't hate her enough to let her go, and he wouldn't love her enough to keep her. But God, he'd wanted to.
Zabini looks up again. "Tell me you're not going to do it, Malfoy." He doesn't sit down, choosing to remain lurking in front of the desk, looking as awkward as a Slytherin can and sorry but also—angry?
Draco remembers Zabini looking around the Slytherin common room with the same expression on his face. He remembers the two of them the summer before Hogwarts started, when Zabini spent four weeks at Malfoy Manor, sneaking into the parlor behind the chair Pansy Parkinson was seated on, right by her mother, and each pulling one of her braids. He remembers Zabini, Crabbe, Goyle, Bullstrode and himself staying up all night to drink Firewhiskey after the last day of classes seventh year. Because of this, and only because of this, Draco restrains his temper and merely says, "I don't know what you're talking about," instead of charming the bottle of scotch on his desk to slam into Zabini's temple.
Zabini doesn't take the opening Draco's left him, though. Instead, he slams his hand down on the desk. "You're really going to let her go. Make her go. God, Malfoy, you're an idiot, you know that? Yes, I fucked her. Yes, it was bloody terrific. And you know what she said directly afterwards?"
"I don't know what makes you think I would care. And if you don't mind, Zabini, it's Christmas Eve, and I really can't be arsed to deal with you, so just bugger. Off."
He looks as if he'd like nothing more than to stride around the desk and shake Draco, but fortunately for Zabini's health, he stays where he is. "She didn't say anything, Malfoy," he says tiredly. "She didn't say anything at all because she was crying too hard to talk. The only thing she managed to say was, 'It was a mistake,' over and over again."
"That doesn't change anything." The thing is, it doesn't. But it's also made the bottom drop out of Draco's world, if getting the pictures by owl this morning hadn't already done that.
Zabini sighs. "I know you don't want to see me, or hear what I have to say, or anything, and I can't say that I blame you, but Malfoy. Just think it over. Give her the chance to explain. And maybe listen to her when she tries to talk to you. You were married for nine years; she deserves at least that."
They stare each other down for a while, and finally Zabini gives in. "I'll let myself out." Draco can't help the thrill of pleasure he gets from it, and he doesn't want to help it. At all. It feels good to be this petty, because it's all he can do right now.
When he reaches the door, Zabini pauses with one hand on the doorknob, turns around, and looks back at Draco, who is pretending indifference.
"Sometimes, it's better to do the hard thing than the easy thing," he says softly.
Fuck this, Draco thinks, and charms the scotch bottle to fly across the room. Even before it shatters on the empty doorframe, he is digging through his desk, searching for the timeturner his mother left him.