Chapter 1 - Absence

Sometimes Draco wished that he had died in the war.

It certainly would have been easier. It would have been much more comfortable, surely, to be done with everything than to deal with the endless drudge that was life post-Dark Lord. His father was in Azkaban now, but Potter (the saint) had testified for him and his mother. The Wizengamot had reluctantly let them go.

So Draco wasn't rotting away in the most infamous prison in the Wizarding World. Yet he occupied his own personal hell night after night. He woke up in a cold sweat constantly, strangled by his own sheets, the ghosts in his head screaming at him to save them—to do better. You failed, they say, phantom mouths agape. Crabbe and Astoria and Mother. You chose the wrong side.

And he had. That was the simple fact of it. Presented with a choice—right or wrong, good or bad—he had chosen Voldemort, the embodiment of evil.

He took Dreamless Sleep in ungodly doses to get them to shut up, if only for a few hours.

It didn't end with the sunrise, which cast an almost accusatory light across his pale face. It rebuked him in its harshness. It struck him with a warmth he didn't deserve.

His owl, Vincent, tapped sharply at the window, a letter tied to his talon. Draco sighed as he slid open the glass, thankful that he lived alone and that no one would have to listen to his Howlers.

(They were often from former classmates, or their bereaved parents. He would never shake the awful rasp that was the cry of Pansy Parkinson, whose throat had been badly burned by a Dark curse, as she sobbed at Draco and condemned him to Hades.)

But the envelope was not the signature scarlet red. Instead, it was a plain black that somehow magnetised darkness, a malnourished scrawl spilling across the corresponding paper.

It was from Azkaban. It was from his father.

Draco, he wrote, Your mother is devastated that you haven't come by to visit me. I'm rather surprised as well. After all I did for you—fed you, clothed you, guided you in the noble ways of magic—you're unable to spare an hour to see me face-to-face.

I understand that you're a busy man, especially in your endeavours to restore the Malfoy name. I hope that, in doing so, you recognise the head of said name, as he is your father. I have been unjustly accused, Draco. Using the connections and leverages which I have built up in my time, I expect you to address these accusations.

I await your actions. Do not disappoint me again.

— Father

Draco crumpled up the letter, envelope and all. He scoffed in disdain. His father's audacity was truly appalling.

It was appalling, yet he found himself making an appointment to visit him nonetheless. After all, he was right. He was his father. He shared the same damned pure blood and the ironically filthy name of Malfoy. There had even been a period of time when Draco had looked up to his father, even idolised him—set him upon a pedestal that shone impossibly in his young, naive eyes.

Even now, there was something very deep inside that craved his father's approval. He knew it was wrong, yet it was there all the same: a whisper of emptiness every time he thought of Lucius Malfoy. Something that still wanted to be filled by his proud eyes. His affirmation that Draco was a good son, worthy of his precious pureblood line.

And now he was standing in front of an iron-wrought cell, brimming with magic-suppressing wards, as a Dementor stood on either side of him like two cloaked vacuums of joy.

His father didn't look like his father. He remembered him as a proud man, even being dragged away by the Wizengamot guards, a figure of the aristocracy in his flaring black robes. He was a coward, but he was a noble coward. He held himself in high regard, exuding assurance in his own superiority.

Now, he only looked like a coward. His pale hair was roughly cut and straggled. He wore a dusty, paper-thin prison jumpsuit, an undignified grey. The only thing that had stayed the same were his eyes; the cold and bitter gleam, frigid even as he raised his head to look at his only son.

"Ah, Draco," he said, a false, incongruent phrase of affection. "I knew you would come. You are my loyal son. You are worthy of the family name."

He was in contact with a man at the Ministry, he went on, who should be able to leverage certain people to get him out of Azkaban. Draco needed to meet with him, he insisted. Once he was out of this place, he would repair everything that had gone wrong. He, Narcissa, and Draco would be a family again—everything would be as it once was.

He broke off then, an edge of eagerness in his eyes as he waited for Draco's acknowledgement, his promise that he would do everything that his father asked him to without complaint. He looked strangely pitiful, alone in his cell. Draco tasted something sour.

"I'm not going to get you out," he found himself saying, and the look on his father's face was twisted. "I'm not going to help you, and I won't let Mother help you, either. This is the last you'll see of me. I thought you should know."

The manufactured patience, the constructed facade, shattered. Lucius slammed against the bars, grabbing onto them with hands that once held a wand that Draco feared. There was an expression of pure anger on his face—a strangled, quivering look of fury.

"You ungrateful little blood traitor," he spat, the words hurled from through his teeth to crash against the wall, "You bastard. You're no son of mine. What kind of heir leaves his father to waste away in a prison, not even lifting a finger to help? This is all your doing. This is all your fault."

Draco shook his head—shook it again, as if trying to rid himself of Lucius' voice. "No," he said. "It's your fault, Father, for dragging me and Mother into your mess. We never wanted to get in with Vol—the Dark Lord. You made us."

Lucius grinned, maniacal. "Well, that isn't true. You were perfectly happy to learn the Dark Arts at a very young age, Draco. You even had a natural inclination towards it. Remember how overjoyed you were when you told me how instantly the Sorting Hat assigned you to Slytherin? And when the Dark Lord returned, you were salivating after the silver mask."

"I wasn't," Draco denied, but he sounded weak even to himself. "You're stretching—you're fabricating truths."

"No. You are just as much a Dark Wizard as I am, Draco. Don't pretend to be something you're not. Just because you're not in Azkaban doesn't mean you're innocent."

Draco turned away.

"You have blood on your hands, too. Don't play at being a saint!" Lucius yelled wildly.

"I'm done," he said to the guards, already walking away. He struggled valiantly against the choking feeling in his throat until he broke out of the Anti-Apparition zone, immediately disappearing from the godforsaken place with a crack.

"Oh, Merlin," he swore, suppressing a cry at the sudden, blinding pain in his right hand. He forced himself to look down at the place where his index finger was missing, blood spilling thickly from its absence. "Merlin. Fuck."

His wand—he didn't have it. They had snapped it at the hearing. Nor did he have any healing potions. He could hardly think through the splitting agony. He found himself stumbling forth, the world blurring around him, unsure of where he was and where he was going. He came upon a door and fell upon it, knocking heavily and drunkenly with his functioning hand.

The door opened. He only heard a startled voice—Malfoy?—before the world spun into darkness.