"Repair the vanishing cabinet"
"Make no mistake"
Draco was thrown out of the cabinet and landed on his stomach on the hard floor. He groaned and heaved himself up. As he did so, he could already see a piece of wood lying in front of his hands, the colour of which looked eerily familiar. "Repair the vanishing cabinet" - It had shattered into several pieces.
But Draco was no longer thinking about his original task. He had to go to his grandfather as quickly as possible and see how things were going.
Abraxas Malfoy's chest rose and fell jerkily. The eyeballs darted back and forth behind the closed lids. Although he was asleep, he looked driven. Sweat trickled down his forehead and no one was there to wipe away his saliva. Slowly, his lips opened a crack and a ghostly rattle escaped from his throat.
Draco held his breath in shock. His grandfather was dying. It wouldn't be long now. He sat down beside him and reached for his hand. So many questions and so little time. Maybe he couldn't answer them at all. "Grandfather?"
"Still here?"
"I...have to ask you something."
"I hope it's important."
Draco just nodded. Then they were silent for a few minutes until Draco realised he would not get a second invitation. "What happened to Ariana?"
"Who?" his grandfather croaked.
"Ariana, your wife."
"Where from..." His eyes lit up. He knew, he remembered. "She left me...in a fly-by-night...She just didn't come back...Her best friend didn't either...I don't know what happened to her..."
"Who was her best friend?"
"Yevgeniya Dolohov."
The girl who had sat next to him at the wedding.
Groaning, Abraxas turned to the other side so that he was facing the wall.
"Grandfather?"
"Grandfather ..." A gruesome suspicion came over him. His heart beat faster and jumped like a hare in a field. Was he dead? "Couldn't it be that Tom Riddle killed them?" He had already planned it and demanded it of Draco. Only law enforcement seemed to have stopped him at the time. Perhaps he had found a way...
Abraxas turned back with a loud groan. His eyes were watering and his skin was puffy. "No... Tom...had lost interest in me...and therefore in her."
"What makes you so sure? He seemed very determined at the time."
"He has moved on to other things...bigger things. Besides, I asked him."
He must have misheard. Pardon? His first instinct was to run to the door to catch up with Tom. His feet didn't move. Did he really want to run into this madman again, especially after he had just...fifty years ago...provoked him? "What bigger things has he turned to?"
Abraxas grunted and fell silent.
"Grandfather?"
"Huh?"
"He might have lied to you."
"Tom doesn't lie if he could cause pain."
"You seem to know him well...", Draco murmured. He had noticed before that Abraxas had a split relationship with Tom, but he couldn't blame him. They had been a couple and the fact that Tom was attractive had also struck Draco. He would love to know what had become of Tom, but Abraxas spoke in riddles. Such irony! "Why are you defending him? Tom tried to get me to kill Ariana. You were eavesdropping, so you're aware of that."
Abraxas gave a long drawn-out sigh. "The dragon pox would have killed me if it hadn't been for Tom. That I have lived fifty years longer is because of him."
"Oh..."
Abraxas had to cough. The seizure shook him and he struggled to breathe.
"Are you all right?" asked Draco, startled, and was even more uncertain when Abraxas shook his head. "What do you want me to do?"
But his grandfather could not give him any instructions. Draco jumped to his feet and ran back and forth until Abraxas had caught himself again.
He felt guilty asking the question, but he wanted an answer and he knew time was short. "Is Tom a healer? Or how could he save you?"
Abraxas shook his head vehemently, even though it must have taken the last of his strength. "He didn't save me!"
"But ..." Draco fell silent. He didn't understand. Quietly, so that it almost drowned in the room, he said, "You're dying."
A long sigh escaped Abraxas, from the depths of his body. "I begged him for so long to take it back. He laughed at me and then he was angry. He said I was ungrateful. Now he's finally done what I've been waiting for."
"Why? Why did you want to die? Why do you want to die?"
"Draco, my boy, death is more merciful than life."
"What does Tom say about that?"
"Don't let him tell you otherwise! Stay away from him!"
"Please...grandfather ...don't take a secret...Abraxas...please..."
"He undid it...after I begged him for fifty years…I never want to think about it again."
"I don't understand..."
"Son...Draco...I don't want to talk about it...Now leave me alone."
Draco reached for his grandfather's hand, but he shook it off and turned to the wall. It was only a few minutes before he was still in the chair and regular, if shallow, breaths were coming from the bed. Abraxas had fallen asleep.
He reached for a book on the bedside table and leafed through it. A few hours went by until Abraxas turned to Draco again. His eyelids fluttered briefly and he looked at him with a glazed expression. Then he reached for Draco's hand and squeezed it before falling asleep again.
Draco knew that this was a sign of gratitude. He had done everything right. With renewed courage, he stroked his arm. The pause between his individual breaths grew longer and longer, until at some point late at night he stopped breathing with a relieving sigh.
oOo
"You always went directly to Lucius with everything and he appreciated that - he didn't know that in his parents' house," Narcissa glanced briefly at the coffin, which was covered with flowers, "but I hope, you know that you can also come to me at any time? I can also solve problems..."
"Of course, Mother," Draco murmured beside her, his gaze still fixed on the pit where his grandfather's coffin was about to disappear. The music stopped and a funeral orator stood beside the coffin to begin the eulogy. "I didn't want to disturb you. Actually, there's nothing that's bothering me at the moment either," he lied. "Only father I miss...and grandfather."
Narcissa patted his back.
"Honoured mourners, I have the difficult task today of offering the last words to our esteemed friend, Abraxas Malfoy," Rosier led the eulogy. "I knew Abraxas since childhood, we attended Hogwarts together and I was also there when he first came down with dragon pox. All of you will know about this fact, after all, he wore the scars on his face all his life afterwards. What many people don't know, however, is how close he came to dying. Actually, the healers had given up, the disease had progressed too far when it was discovered. Abraxas had already said goodbye to everyone. Then, miraculously, he was cured."
Draco glared at Rosier. How could he learn more about his grandfather from these few words than he had been told all his life? Of course he had known that Abraxas had survived the dragon pox once, but that it had been so close...One probably didn't like to talk about things that made one re-evaluate one's previous existence.
"That Abraxas lived on against all predictions was thanks to a wizard who is no longer with us today and who, if he were, would not want to be named."
Tom.
Hearing that Tom had already passed away made him strangely concerned. He didn't know why, after all Tom had tried to kill his grandmother.
"The fact that he has now succumbed to dragon pox, of all things, is not an irony of fate, but the continuation of a chain of tragedies. His father, Armand Malfoy, and his mother, Imogene Malfoy, still remembered as colourful personalities by the oldest among us, also died of dragon pox in the 1960s. In 1972, Abraxas' younger brother followed them. Abraxas' spouse also died of dragon pox on a trip to Albania."
He wondered what had become of Tom before he died? Maybe he would find him if he looked around among the gravestones?
Draco's gaze wandered aimlessly back and forth and caught on a silhouette standing some distance away in front of a gravestone. The black hood hung low on her face and only the wind moved the hem of the dark robe she wore a little. She stood there so soulfully that Draco was sure she was waiting for something. Perhaps he was listening to the speech? Then he must have excellent ears.
As if he had noticed Draco's gaze, the head jerked up. The hood slid back a little and the ashy skin of a pointed chin was revealed. Something seemed to flash in the shadows above the face, as if the figure had gems for eyes.
"Excuse me," Draco whispered to his mother and disappeared before she could say anything back. He turned once and saw Narcissa looking palely after him, shaking her head anxiously. But Draco had experienced too much, fear was a marginal feeling.
"Why are you hiding here?" he addressed the figure. "Did you know Abraxas Malfoy personally?"
"Abraxas was in my debt," replied a high-pitched and winter-night cold voice.
A flash went through Draco's body. "My lord, forgive me!" As devotedly as he could, he bowed his head.
"Don't move, stay where you are and how you are," the dark lord ordered. "We don't want to draw any more attention to ourselves."
"Of course not, sir."
"I've come to collect a debt." He beckoned him towards him and Draco's legs trembled as he obeyed this command. More and more he could decipher the inscription on the tombstone before which the dark lord stood there. It was simple, without embellishments, without a grave slogan, just the name and the year of birth and death.
Ariana Riddle
1929 - 1950
"Is that?", Draco's voice failed. "Is that Ariana Malfoy's grave?"
The dark lord nodded.
"Why is she buried under that name?"
"You ask excellent questions, Draco," the dark lord hissed. "Abraxas didn't have that talent. He always poured the potion into the vial first and then wanted to stir it."
Draco began to sweat as Voldemort owed him an answer, but it would be disobedient to probe. "What did my grandfather owe you?"
"Don't call him grandfather."
"Excuse me, sir."
"And it's not about what he owed. Abraxas had already received his punishment for staying away from me all his life." In an ominous gesture, he pointed to the gravestone. "Unsuccessfully kept away, because his life was dominated by me and mine anyway. It's about the promise you didn't keep."
"I don't understand, sir."
"You were supposed to kill Ariana and you didn't."
"I...apologise..."
"So now I have a new task for you. Extend your arm."
Draco shivered. He fell to the ground, the moss caressing his cheek all at once. Voldemort towered over him like a storm front. "I made no bargain with you!"
"Extend your arm, dearest Draco."
Unable to move, he remained lying in the moss. Voldemort's footsteps thundered across the ground. A cold hand with bony fingers pulled at his wrist. The tip of the wand grazed over it, drawing strokes and arcs. A razor-sharp pain followed the touch.
"Ah!" yowled Draco.
"It's already over," the dark lord suddenly said softly, stroking his hair.
Draco had only once felt such extraordinary tenderness, fragile but stirring. Shocked, he heaved himself to his feet and gazed at the finished work. The dark mark shone at him from his forearm. Carefully, he palpated the ink in his skin. "You know Tom Riddle?" He wondered if he also knew of his journey into the past?
Again Voldemort pointed to the gravestone. "I know everything he knew."
Draco swallowed and thought about how he should formulate the next question. But the dark lord beat him to it, "I also know that you have just returned from 1949. I waited a long time to see if my experiment worked." He laughed. "Did you think your little time travel with the vanishing cabinet was an accident?"
Lost in thought, he shook his head. Images raced past him. Tom standing before him, enraged. He had only just repaired the vanishing cabinet. But Voldemort was talking about his experiment. "You are Tom Riddle?"
Voldemort nodded. "I was. You combined that well. Did you gain any more insight?"
He shook his head.
"Then you get another task. Repair the vanishing cabinet again. You have experience with that by now." He spread his arms and held him close. Draco stiffened, but let this closeness wash over him. Voldemort's breath brushed his ear. He whispered, "Kill Dumbledore. Make no mistake."