𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐒𝐄𝐂𝐑𝐄𝐓 𝐆𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐍

❃ I'm sorry

She flatlined two hours into surgery.

Her funeral was small, private. Her friends, their parents, Mother, Narcissa, Draco and Astoria.

Draco was confused, and slightly annoyed as to why he had to attend the funeral of a girl he only knew as someone who attended his wedding.

He was told by Daph it was one of their close friends. She didn't answer when he asked why he was never introduced to her.

He didn't expect to be saddened at the loss of someone he'd never known.

Instead he found himself sobbing over her casket, a hole in his heart as he asked Astoria over and over again, "Why am I crying so much? I didn't even know her."

Draco moved on with Astoria, despite the feeling of loss that sat pitted in his stomach.

He learned the routine of crying every night, staring at the painting outside of the bedroom with the dark wooden door.

Astoria would cry in the opposite wing of the house. She visited Maybelle's grave every other Tuesday evening to express her condolences.

"I figured you might want to know what he might be up to," she sniffled, leaving a bouquet of flowers over her headstone. She would replace the flowers weekly.

'In loving memory of Maybelle Flower Cliffdane
A tiny flower lent not given, to bud on earth and bloom in heaven.'

Her grave sat through the summer grasses, autumn leaves, winter snow and spring tulips as they sprung around the stone.

Draco served his years of probation, then continued on as an Auror working at the Ministry. He specialized in cases involving the abuse and sexual abuse of minors.

Everything he did was for her. And yet he couldn't remember who.

He had a son, three years later named Scorpius Flos Malfoy. Scorpius, a constellation lying in the third quadrant of the Southern Hemisphere, Flos, meaning Flower in Latin.

She'd missed seeing him happy.

His son; his light.

'I'll watch over him,' she thought. She would watch over Scorpius as her own; the son she ever had.

............

Theodore knocked on her front door.

"May? Hello?? It's eleven in the morning, I've got a major hangover and I'm carrying five grocery bags, so if you could offer a little help that'd be great," he yelled through the wood.

No answer.

"Maybelle? I have more ice cream," he peeked an eye through the peephole. Her television was still on.

"Fuck, you're so annoying," he grumbled, dropping her grocery bags on the front stoop before unlocking her door, walking inside.

"Wake up sleepyhead," He yelled, walking through the kitchen, then the living room.

Silence.

He trudged his way up the stairs.

"May?" He looked inside her bedroom. Her bed was unoccupied. "What, are you peeing?"