✧*✶ B E F O R E ✶*✧
DRACO Malfoy's mother filled the memories of his youth with whispers — she always whispered, her cold fingers lingering on his shoulder, the feeling somehow burning into his skin forever. She would whisper secrets, only to be shared between the two of them; the sound of their laughter echoing through the empty house, bouncing off the stone walls, unknowingly engraved itself into his every day thoughts. On lazy summer afternoons, she would whisper encouraging tibits as he practiced projecting sparks from his father's spare wand — in the frigid winters, her encouragements kept him warm. Narcisa Malfoy spoke as if someone was always listening, her hushed voice blowing across you like a winter breeze.
She whispered so much that it was only fitting that she whispered something to her son — her dear son, her only son — using the last breaths of her tragically complicated life.
"Draco," she had murmured, her fingers running over the rough edges of her sons jaw, as if she were clambering to cling to the last monument that made her human, "Remember. You are not defined by the shadows of your past — " she had coughed slightly, a ribbon of blood slipping easily from the right corner of her mouth, "You are defined by who you chose to become in the end." Her grip on his face tightened, he could feel her presence slowly vanishing, being swept away by the winds of reality — "Be brave." she murmured, her voice sounding strong once again, "Be brave enough to fix what you started — Promise me, yes? You will always be brave?"
Now you must understand the simple truths – compared to Draco and Lucis, Narcisa was good. She was the light in the darkness, the wind before the rain – yet how could someone so good, be facing death? It wasn't right. But during a war, nothing ever is.
"Mother — " Draco began, fully intending on demolishing her feeble hopes of his moral compass, "We both know it's too late for that." Draco firmly believed that the path of his life was already cut, there was no escaping destiny; he was already burning in the fires of hell — redemption was like a child's wish, destined to never be granted.
His mother had let out a wispy laugh, her fingers were losing their grip on his face, her nails scraping across his flesh. "You will find a way." She murmured, "The light always finds a way through the darkness."
Unable to produce a stable argument on why she was wrong, Draco had simply focused on keeping his mother alive – the panic of what he had done was beginning to set in, propelling him forward as he frantically began to murmur enchantments under his breath, the dark magic he so frequently spoke simply slipping off his tongue.
But his intentions of cheating death were shattered when his mother's limp grip tightened ever so slightly around his wrist. Unable to speak, Narcisa had gently shook her head, producing yet another cough that spilled blood from her lips, splattering the porcelain surface of her skin with a crimson stain.
"What's done," she had chocked out, the ability to breathe properly ebbing away, "is done."
With shaky breaths that ripped him from the inside out, Draco watched as his Mother – the only person who had ever seen the good in him, the only person who had ever truly loved him took her final breath, her heaving chest falling still.
Draco cradled his mother's still body in his arms, refusing to acknowledge the tears that were welling in his eyes. Death, he'd firmly reminded himself, is part of life.
Using what was left of his strength, Draco had pushed himself off the stone floor, the chill of kneeling against it for so long lingering with him. His hands were covered — metaphorically and physically — with his mother's blood, his eyes filled with tears that refused to fall. His mother had always been a symbol good, (REMEMBER: we talked about this. The Malfoy's had a bad habit of miscalculating what GOOD and EVIL truly were) but like everything else in Draco Malfoy's tragically complicated life, her light had burned brightly before his eyes and then slipped into the darkness. In the wake of his mother's death, Draco realized three things. He was cold, alone and in desperate need of some faith – he would never be able to carry out his mother's dying wish.
