June 30th.
Draco vividly remembered only three things from that night.
The third was fire, an inferno that torched the oaf's hut, roaring to the sky. There was stifling heat and a red glow—like hell, if such a place existed.
The second was glass shattering, exploding across the Great Hall and screaming into the night, accompanied Aunt Bellatrix's shrieking laughter. A duet of destruction. Something sacred turned to rubble.
The first was the soft uttering of unforgivable words and a flash of green light. Dumbledore was falling, and horror and shock struck him like a blow.
He could not stop feeling that heat, hearing that shattering glass, seeing the flash of green. Hope, Draco realized, had fallen over the edge of the astronomy tower.
The Dark Lord had won.
-o-
The Dark Lord stood on the steps outside Malfoy Manor, victory shining viciously on his face. His arms swept wide, welcoming his servants back from their mission. Aunt Bellatrix shrieked and laughed, dancing about him in wicked glee. The others bowed or nodded, gathering around him like a devoted flock. Snape quietly filled him in on the details of the night as his aunt chanted over and over again that Dumbledore was dead.
Draco stood there stiffly as the Dark Lord's gaze fell upon him. A smile slithered across his face. "You have done well, Draco," he hissed.
As the crowd shifted and the Dark Lord lowered his arms, Draco's eyes fell upon his mother standing stiffly behind him. Her face was like stone, but relief shone in her eyes. If she approved of the outcome or not, he couldn't tell. Could only tell that she was glad he was home, that he had survived.
Draco thought he would feel the same. Relief, or some small sense of triumph that he had made it this far. But he did not. Dread was a permanent knot in his stomach. Hope was like a stone sinking in the sea.
-o-
"A reward," the Dark Lord had called it, and then his father had walked through the front door.
"Lucius!" his mother exclaimed, flying into his father's arms. He held her tightly, his haggard face portraying the same pain as a man dying of thirst yields at the sight of a drop of water.
Draco was frozen to the spot, taking in this version of his father. Lucius Malfoy, who once seemed so tall and imposing, now seemed small and fragile. His hair was limp and frayed, his posture folding in on itself, and there was a frightened pallor to his skin. His eyes, no longer a clear, ice-blue but a cloudy gray, appeared haunted, ringed with dark circles he had never before seen on his father's face. There were tears in those eyes.
"Draco," his father whispered, a raspy summons from his father's once elegant tongue, as he lifted his gaze. Was it the screaming that had stolen his voice? Draco went to him and was pulled into a desperate embrace. The rough stubble on his father's jaw scratched Draco's forehead raw as he held his wife and son as though afraid they would disappear.
Draco hugged his father back and tried not to cry. His family was together again. This was what it had all been for, every terrible thing he had done, just to see his father again, to bring him home to his mother. To be together, even if the new world was unbearable.
And it was that thought that made Draco cry a handful of silent tears.
Author's Note: In the film, right after Snape kills Dumbledore, the camera cuts to Draco for just a second and we see his expression warp to shock and remorse. He is horrified. I think that second of screen time was his turning point.
