Where The Sun Drops | drarry post-war

fourteen | pressed roses

The graveyard was just about visible from the drive of the Manor where Harry had parked his car.

Or, to be more precise, the figure of Malfoy's mother was visible, her shaking shoulders clad in black and little white blossoms falling softly from the trees around her like tears.

Harry's heart ached at the sight. "I want to tell her you're right here," he whispered, but Draco shook his head.

"What good would that do?" he asked irritably. "She won't see me. Let her grieve."

They stayed in the car for a while, staring side by side down the drive to the family graveyard and the shadow cast over it by the enormity of Narcissa Malfoy's grief.

The August sun was beginning to sink a little redder into the sky, beating late afternoon warmth through the windscreen of Harry's car. He wondered if Malfoy could feel warmth these days, but decided not to ask.

Those steely silver eyes were fixed straight ahead at the scene, and Harry knew better than to bother him at a time like this. Who knew how he might react?

Just then, as if she could feel the intensity of the gazes directed towards her, Narcissa's head suddenly turned to glance back down the drive. Harry fought the urge to hide, and instead got out of the car with an awkward wave.

"What are you doing, you freak??" Draco hissed. "Leave my mother alone, we'll come back when she isn't here! She doesn't want to see you!"

"She might," Harry replied through a forced smile directed down the drive, wiping his sweaty palms on his thighs.

"Do you realise you fucking murdered her son?" the ghost demanded.

Harry ignored him, focused instead on the soft gravel of the drive underfoot and the stern-faced woman at the other end of it. Such accusations from Draco were beginning to lose their meaning.

***

Harry wasn't sure what to expect when he reached the plot where Draco's mother stood. He wondered whether he should make an excuse for being there, but something about the tight set of her lips told him he shouldn't.

"Didn't anybody ever tell you it's rude to turn up unannounced, young Potter?" Narcissa asked in an eerily Draco-esque tone.

Harry opened his mouth to reply, but then, all at once and before he could even begin to make the sound of a word, she'd pulled him into the tightest hug he'd had in months.

Harry could feel her shoulders shaking against him, and numbly reached to put his arms around her, surprised at how flattered and comfortable he felt at the contact.

"You feel so much like him," Narcissa whispered, her voice ragged.

"It's the Seeker build," Harry offered, and she nodded, squeezing her eyes shut against his chest.

"You're smaller than he was," she spoke again, slightly muffled this time, "but you feel stronger. Are you strong, Harry?"

"Not really," he whispered. "I try to be but I'm not."

And so, as the motherless son and the sonless mother embraced by the cold stone of the grave, each began to unashamedly cry.

To cry for the horrors they'd seen, for the mistakes they'd each made, and for the dead boy who was the source of so much pain for each of them in his own way.

When the sobs subsided, Narcissa reverted quickly back to her elegant Malfoy composure, only a single wet drop on an eyelash revealing any emotion had even taken place.