Hello!

It's not very happy for Draco and Blaise, I'm sorry, but I hope you will find it beautiful. I like this friendship and I wanted to write them a little something.

Enjoy!

The hallways of the Ministry had never looked so dreary. The shadows of the people passing by were reflected on the black stone and their footsteps echoed in the stultifying silence. The wait was terrible, but what torture was it compared to what was going to follow?

Without moving a single muscle, without blinking a single second, Draco stared at the floor intently. His rigidly straight back formed a line perfectly parallel with the wall behind him. Without leaning on it, he kept the distance always equal to a few centimeters so that he continually felt the coldness that emanated from the charcoal-colored marble. His hands-on his knees, his feet aligned at the exemplary right angle formed by his thighs and calves, he remained motionless and unmoved by everything that was going on around him.

They had been taken there at dawn, flanked by employees who were stingy with words, but not with contemptuous gazes. And they had left them there without caring for them any more, with the only order to wait and be quiet. Draco had felt his lips quiver before suppressing the mocking sneer that would have brushed them. As if there was anything more they could do than sit still: wandless, sleepless, hopeless.

In the seat next to him, Draco could feel his neighbor's tremors. He couldn't blame Blaise for being gripped by anguish. He certainly hadn't slept since the day he received the summons to appear before the Wizengamot. Draco couldn't blame him, just like he couldn't afford to give in to fear himself. Surrender to crying and night terrors would mean he felt guilty. And he was already sufficiently aware of what he had done wrong not to begin to feel sorry for himself.

Because Draco was a bad person and he knew it. He was in the category of the story villains. He could easily have blamed his family: his mother was almost non-existent as the shadow of her father hung over her every day; his aunt was a sociopath, madly insane, psychologically unstable, and happily dead; his father was a violent man and manipulator, camped on his positions and alcoholic and depressed because of the war he had participated to declare.

But Draco was a bad person because he had bad things in him. His family and his social environment had only accelerated to the fiery hatred that had burned in him. He had acted, sometimes of his own free will, sometimes because he had no choice but he had acted no matter what. And he accepted to be judged for his actions. He even agreed to go to jail if that was the sentence. As always in his life, he would have accepted whatever he would have been told to accept. Its existence had, in any case, no longer any interest.

His parents were about to be judged too, the same day or the next; he no longer knew. If they were going to Azkaban, Draco had no reason to continue to live. Blaise sniffed beside him and Draco thought to himself that maybe he was a reason, if not the only reason he would have to persevere in this dark world. Draco had spent his best times with Blaise. His fondest memories were with him: in the manor gardens, on a quidditch pitch, in the halls of Hogwarts. He could, without any hesitation, regard him as his best friend. The brother he had never had. He was the most fulfilled, jovial, and happy person he knew.

But Blaise no longer smiled, he no longer laughed, he no longer spoke to anyone apart from Draco. He had grown dull, gray, taciturn, and sad. And Draco figured that the injustice wasn't in the fact that he himself was doomed, that his father was doomed, or that any Death Eater or Voldemort supporter was doomed. Draco told himself that the injustice was that Blaise was doomed to misfortune when he was the most radiant person he had ever known.

He found it unfair to have his zest for the life taken away from him, his eccentricity so unusual in Slytherin house. Let him be reduced to silence, he who chatted constantly and took a malicious pleasure in gossiping. Because Blaise hadn't done anything and his only fault was to be the son of a nymphomaniac in constant search of fortune. Blaise hadn't done anything. Leave him alone, by Morgane.

But that, Draco couldn't shout it out to whoever wanted to hear it. And it was not the opinion of the new Ministry which put all its efforts to bring before the court all the witches and wizards more or less connected to the forces of Evil.

"Mr. Zabini, your hearing will begin in two minutes. I will demand you to step forward and wait with the Auror on duty. "

And the employee disappeared as her monotonous, expressionless voice still echoed.

Draco felt his friend block his breath and shake twice as violently. Then Blaise miraculously stood up on his feverish legs and Draco did the same. They exchanged a look in which they could read all the despair, despondency, and desolation that weighed on them. Draco took a step towards his friend and put his arms around him. After the shock and amazement, Blaise closed his own around him.

It was the first time since their infancy that Draco had given such a strong mark of affection to his best friend. So Blaise enjoyed it as if it was the last one. Because it was probably the last and that was why Draco was giving it to him. Because they both knew it was probably a goodbye.

One of those who tear, one of those who kill.

And Blaise put his chin on Draco's shoulder, unable to stop shaking. And he hugged him tight until he felt his heart pounding against his ribs and his whole body vibrating against his.

"It'll be better when we're dead," Draco whispered.

And he let Blaise burst into tears.

He heard his crying buzz in his head until he disappeared and found himself alone.

Facing fate.