Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

A/N: This piece gave me a lot, and I mean a lot of trouble. It was originally meant to be another piece in my Astral Romance series, a ficlet inspired by Nightwish's song "Away," but I just couldn't make it work. So I abandoned that idea, started from scratch, and it morphed into this. It still contains elements of the original piece (some phrases stuck), but for the most part it's drastically different.

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Stars

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To the public, Draco Malfoy's life was the kind that everyone wished for. He had a huge estate, two doting parents, and good marks in school. But still, sometimes he couldn't help but wish...

He wished that his mother would smile at him more, like Pansy's mother did. He wished that his father wasn't always so busy, and that he could find some way to be good enough for both his parents. But Draco didn't wish for his parents to love him. After all, that wasn't what parents were supposed to do, was it? They were supposed to make sure you associated with the Right People, believed in all the Right Things, and didn't give the family a bad name. And his parents did a very excellent job of that. So, he supposed, his life was good. All he had to do was be obedient and listen to Mummy and Daddy, and he would get anything you could possibly buy. Only, he must never call his parents anything but Mother and Father, Or Else.

That was the thing. Lucius Malfoy was the kind of man who could say some silly little thing like "or else" and make it sound like the most sinister of fates. There were always the implied capital letters, as in everything else he said, and the certain terseness in his voice that let you know that, no, he didn't want to waste his time getting angry, but if you drove him to it, he would be furious. He never, ever rose a hand to his son, but Draco would have preferred that to the understood threat ('If You Ever Do That Again, You Will Wish You Had Never Been Born') and the quiet, seething fury. Draco was terrified of his father, but he wouldn't have admitted it if his life were on the line.

Narcissa Malfoy was very similar to her husband, but she was somehow insubstantial, for all appearances nothing but a shadow of a person. Her smooth, perfectly stoic face remained, perpetually, just that. When her son bested Hermione Granger in potions, or made quidditch captain, or did anything else noteworthy, his reward from her was a blank stare and a quiet, monotonous 'Well Done, Draco.' When he did something unsavory, such as forget to glare at Harry Potter every now and again, or defending a gutless, cowardly first year from the other Slytherin seventh years, or sharing his History of Magic notes with a filthy Ravenclaw blood traitor, she would purse her lips, ever so slightly, and leave the room while Lucius 'Dealt With Him.' Draco often thought that his mother was disappointed in him, but what he didn't know was that, after he was asleep for the night, Narcissa would swathe herself in her flowing silk robe, looking like a spirit in the moonlight, and tiptoe through the corridors to his room. She would stroke his hair, humming soft, sweet lullabies accompanied by the sound of his sleep-deepened breathing, and then, only then, would she smile.

Had he asked him to, Draco's father would have bought his way into the Minister of Magic position. But, if Draco had so much as mentioned the beauty of the night sky, Narcissa Malfoy would have found a way to give him the stars.

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