a grave for flowers | drarry

chapter 1

chapter 1

It was inevitable.

That was all Draco could say, really, when his sentence was handed down to him by the stone-faced Wizengamot judges looking down upon him from the high table like gargoyles. And in exchange, he handed over his wand, feeling rather empty as he did so. The court probably expected more of a reaction from him; an outburst, perhaps. Some red-hot anger, some indignation. 

And it wasn't that Draco didn't want to give them what they wanted to see. It was that Draco was tired. Bone-tired, a kind of white static descending over him. He couldn't fight against these people. He knew he couldn't.

It was inevitable.

You are a Malfoy, his father had said to him through the bars at Azkaban. Don't you let them forget that.

How could anyone forget that he was a Malfoy? White-blonde head and too-perfect teeth. Slender and pale. Haughty chin. But his name held next to no weight, now, not with his father in prison and his mother disgraced and Voldemort's name casting a shadow on their former glory. From the second he was born, his path had been chosen for him. For he was a Malfoy. 

It was inevitable.

He was escorted out of the courtroom, wandless, powerless, spineless, and he felt the ache of each missing thing. Was that all he used to be? Just some showy spells, some wealth, and a skeleton inside a body?

If that was all he used to be, what could he possibly be now?

A coward, something hissed to him, like a snake coiled in his navel. 

They tied an anklet to him, silver and plain. "To prevent you from doing any kind of magic, wanded or wandless," a bitter-faced woman informed him. "And to prevent you from entering any Wizarding territory. If you try to take it off, an Auror will be onto you in less than a minute and another year will be added to your sentence."

He was taken to the suburbs of Muggle Britain. They presented to him a small house, and left him there with hateful backward glances and only a few half-hearted wards for his protection.

He stared up at his new house. It was barely the size of the ballroom alone at Malfoy Manor. The shutters were an ugly green, and  tendrils of ivy crawled up the side of the house toward the upstairs window as though clawing to get in. The front yard was barely a patch of dirt. 

As he lay in the lumpy, broken-spring bed that night, the anklet chafing against his skin and the chill of early spring stealing the heat from his breath—for they didn't leave him blankets—Draco didn't wonder how he had fallen so low, or why he deserved a cold house big enough for house elves. Instead, he wondered what a Galleon was in Muggle money. He wondered what on earth a toaster was. He wondered how anyone would hire him, a boy who had never worked a day in his life, and he wondered if his meager pension from the Ministry would sustain him until that day came.

Draco didn't question the life he was given. Because that left room for regrets, and Draco wanted to keep that door closed at all costs.

It was inevitable, and that was all the explanation Draco could manage to feed his empty heart.

♢

Harry never really understood how Hermione could return to Hogwarts. 

"I need to finish my education," she explained to Harry before she left. "I need to catch up on everything I missed."

What is there to catch up on? Harry wanted to ask her. They had learned how to hunt, in more ways than one, always freezing and hungry, always after the next Horcrux. They learned warding spells so advanced that they could give the Fidelius Charm a run for its money. They learned how long one could go without a proper bath. They learned what fear was, and what death was. They learned how to survive.

Wasn't that all there was to life?

But Harry gave her a hug and promised to meet up with her at Hogsmeade on weekends, although they both knew he wouldn't really, and saw her off at Platform Nine and Three Quarters. Ron refused to come, for he couldn't bear returning to that station without thinking of the brother he had lost or the angry, heartbroken sister Harry had broken up with, and Hermione hid her watery eyes in Harry's shoulder for a moment before she boarded the train without looking back. 

And she didn't look out the window as the train rolled out of the station, either. 

Harry waved anyway.

And when Harry exited the King's Cross—narrowly escaping the mob of grateful people, their fingers reaching for him, begging to touch, seeking tangible proof of the Boy-Who-Lived—he exhaled a shaky breath as he looked up at the sky. It was a pretty blue, and the wind that blew trembled just as much as his sigh. Uncertain, nervous, restless. 

What was he to do next? He was no longer a boy. He was a man, a man who grew up far too fast and yet was never given the chance to grow up. He had only a vault of gold that he didn't want, nightmares, and no girlfriend to wake him up from them.

Somewhere in between the worlds of childhood and adulthood, Harry Potter walked a high wire act, never sure which one he belonged to.