When the battle's lost and won, Draco gen, rated PG

[peki]

Title: When the battle's lost and won
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Draco, Lucius/Narcissa, a tiny bit of Draco/Pansy. But mostly gen :)
Summary: It is strange, Draco finds afterwards, when all is over and done with and the shock is beginning to wear off, being alive when he believed so surely that he was going to die.
A/N: Title by black_alnair channeling Shakespeare *g* Thanks!

It is strange, Draco finds afterwards, when all is over and done with and the shock is beginning to wear off, being alive when he believed so surely that he was going to die. Knew it, really, because what other way out was there? He never hoped to die, of course (though he came close, a few times), but he’d been so certain. But then, he’d been certain of a lot of things in his life, and none of them were true now.

His neck hurts when he turns his head to the left to look into his father’s bruised face. The war is over. Supposedly, they should be happy. Everyone else is. But Draco can’t help feeling that being happy now, with them, for them, would mean making a total fool of himself. It’s bad enough he’s still here, among these people he doesn’t belong with. They won. He’s lost, although…

“Draco.” His mother is clutching at him, fingers digging deeply into his arm, and she’s hurting him, but even if he could muster the strength to tell her, Draco doesn’t think she’d let go. The Great Hall is stifling and warm with the candles that banish the night and the heat of celebration. Wedged between his parents, his mother’s arms around him, he feels sweaty and gross and tired, and he just wants to go home before anyone takes notice of them. He doesn’t even know why they haven’t left yet, why his parents won’t move. Perhaps they are tired. Draco is tired.

“Darling,” his mother murmurs, close to his ear. Brushes her fingers through his damp fringe. “Oh, darling, your nose… And I don’t have my wand…”

Draco tries to snort, but his bloody nose hurts. Disgruntled, he wishes he knew who’d thrown that punch, out of nowhere, and for a moment fancies that he’d actually punch back. He thinks it must’ve been Weasley. Tonight’s not a good night to punch Weasleys, though. He glances across the hall, at the long row of bodies that have been brought in from the battlefield. There’s a head of red hair among them, and a pink one too. He quickly looks away. “I’ve seen a few wands lying around.”

“I don’t think we want to be seen stealing from the dead at a moment like this,” his father remarks dryly, but his voice is laced with pain, too.

“The dead.” Narcissa’s voice is small. For weeks and weeks, she has protected him, protected both Draco and his father, raised her voice to plead with the Dark Lord and shielded them with her body when His wrath was too great to listen, but now she crumples, and pressed against his side, Draco can feel her shudder. “Bella…Rodolphus…Severus…”

Draco knows he should mourn his aunt, his uncle, but he only feels hollow and empty inside when he thinks of them, or of their lost cause. His anger burned out a long time ago, and it has left a big, gaping hole. Now that the fear is gone, he can feel it.

He can feel the pain now too, when he thinks of Professor Snape. Of Crabbe. He wants to speak, add to the names his mother murmurs, but his throat feels tight all of a sudden and he can’t. Pansy, he thinks, and Blaise and Theo Nott and Goyle. He hasn’t seen them among the still, limp bodies, but then, he hasn’t really looked. He doesn’t think he could.

“Their bodies. Lucius, their bodies--”

“We can’t see to them now,” Lucius says quietly. “You know we can’t.”

Narcissa draws a quivering breath. “Yes, I know. Of course not.”

“I want to go home.” Draco knows he sounds like a baby, but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t want to think of bodies, of walking past rows and rows of bloody corpses, peering into white, empty faces. It was bad enough when they were strangers, Muggles or blood traitors who were brought to the Manor to…

He shivers. Maybe he doesn’t want to return home after all. But there is nowhere else to go that he can think of. His friends… Well. He doesn’t even know where they went, if they’re not here. For a moment, he fervently hopes they made it out alive too, hopes that Pansy ran and didn’t look back before the battle even started (as he would’ve liked to), but at the same time, he wishes that she didn’t, and he resents himself and her for it.

“Yes, we need to go.” Like Draco, his father looks around expecting people to object to their presence here, but no one pays them any attention whatsoever. A tiny part inside him gives a twinge of indignation, but Draco can’t even feel properly offended. He’s kind of glad, actually. “If they let us.”

“They will. For now,” a voice says.

Draco’s head snaps up. Potter looks horrible - dirty and sweaty and beat, but satisfied all the same. Smug and triumphant, like he expects them to cheer and congratulate him, and Draco knows that maybe he should be thankful, and maybe he is, but there’s no way Potter will get his gratitude on top of everyone else’s, tonight.

“What do you want?” he snarls at Potter, but it sounds weak even to his own ears. He winces. Try as he might, he can’t bring himself to sneer. It’s like every muscle in his body has gone slack with exhaustion, like it doesn’t even know how to move anymore. What to do now.

Potter shrugs. “Well, I wanted to give this back, but if you don’t want it…” He holds out Draco’s wand. “I mended mine, I don’t need it anymore,” he says, as if he needs to explain anything to anyone, and suddenly Draco remembers being eleven on the Hogwarts Express and offering Potter his hand. Being rejected.

For a second, he wants to refuse it - Malfoys shouldn’t need bloody charity. But they do, they really, really do, and and Draco isn’t young and stupid enough anymore to refuse a hand that’s offered to him in grudging truce. It’s all there is now, now that there’s peace.

“I do want it.” He snatches the wand, greedy. “Thanks.” It sounds like an insult, a challenge, and he half expects Potter to scowl and tell him that this is not about him, this is not about Draco, it’s just because Potter is a bloody hero and he always must do what’s right and good.

But Potter just grins, like he expected Draco to react just like this and almost, almost enjoys that bit of normalcy among the chaos. “It’s a good wand,” he says. “It helped. Lots. Don’t do anything stupid with it.”

Draco doesn’t know what to make of that, so he just scowls. His father mirrors his dark look as Potter turns to Narcissa.

“Thanks,” he says. “I know why you did it and I know it wasn’t because you care about any of this,” he makes a grand gesture that encompasses the whole room and its many noisy, battle-bruised occupants, “but still, thanks.”

“For what?” Draco snaps, but Potter has already turned around and walked off, not sparing them another glance. The crowd swallows him up, and as every eager, happy face turns towards him, Narcissa stands and grasps her son’s and husband’s hands.

“A favour that I did him,” she says, tugging at their hands. “So he would do us one. And he has. Let us go.”

One wand for three people isn’t nearly enough, but it’s better than nothing, and although some of its magic has adapted to accommodate Potter instead of him, it still feels familiar and comfortable in Draco’s hand. It is a good wand. Draco doesn’t want Potter to be right, but he can’t bring himself to wish that it wasn’t.

He manages to Apparate the three of them to the wrought-iron gate behind which their house lies quiet and empty now, and as they walk up the long drive side by side, it feels like coming home for the first time in months.

The house is a mess, though. Draco knew that - was made to contribute to it, in fact, add to the bloody stains on the carpets and aim practice curses at his mother’s crystal, but over long months and months, he was too paralysed to care. Now, there’s room for anger and indigation and shame at the humiliation that he had to suffer, and he stalks through the ruins of his childhood home and allows his hate for the one who did this to them to soar freely.

“Reparo,” he yells at a broken chair, a vase, the ripped canvas of a portrait. “Reparo, reparo, reparo!” He is breathing harshly when he finishes. There is more to do, more to fix, but his anger his quite gone, evaporated with his sudden outburst, and now he just feels tired.

“Draco, it’s all right.” His mother’s voice is gentle, calm in the storm of his rage just like it’s always been, and how can she be like this, how can she be like always when everything is different now?

“It’s not!” he snarls, pointing his wand at the next best thing. The crystal ashtray he’d just fixed shatters again under the force of his hex. The glass explodes into glittering shards that sparkle like falling stars in the night, and there’s a hot, sharp pain on the back of his hand.

Draco gasps, and with the small, pained noise, cold air rushes into his lungs, expands inside his chest like a bubble threatening to burst, and he feels like screaming, crying, sobbing on the floor until he’s empty, empty inside and he can sleep.

But he doesn’t. He can’t. He’s bleeding, a thin dark trickle against his skin that shines white in the moonlight, and with the pain, he remembers a different night, a chandelier falling like a waterfall of light, and then darkness descending over them with His wrath. And the pain. The pain. It’ll always be there, the memory, burned into the inside of his lids whenever he closes his eyes, and how is he ever supposed to sleep?

An icy shiver starts at the back of his neck. His eyes burn.

“Draco,” his father says, and Draco can hear how uncertain he is now, how weak. How was it that he never noticed before, for years and years? “We’ll rebuild it. Everything. Tomorrow.”

There was a time, Draco remembers, when his father’s every word seemed like the command of a mighty god, and every lazy flick of his wand could move the stars. A time when Draco believed nothing would touch him as long as his parents were there, watching over him. A long time ago, before Draco became the one who had to save them.

“Without wands?” he shouts, and the words echo harshly off the high walls. “However are you going to do that?”

Lucius sighs. “If we have to, we’ll rebuild it the way our ancestors did.” He lays a heavy hand on his son’s shoulder. “Stone by stone, as long as it takes. This house will never fall. Not as long as there are Malfoys still alive.”

“And there are,” Narcissa says forcefully. She slides her arm around her husband’s waist, and he lets go of Draco’s shoulder and leans into her slender body instead. “Come upstairs, your wounds need tending to. Draco, you too. Come.”

“Leave me alone for a minute, will you,” he snaps at her, viciously angry.

She doesn’t reprimand him, as he half-expected (half-hoped, just so he’d have a reason to…) “Of course.” Her face is tight though as she leads her husband upstairs, leaving Draco behind in the hall.

He watches them climb the stairs, steps uncertain in the darkness, until they’ve reached the landing and disappeared from view, and with a slow, sinking feeling, the tight, painful lump in his chest slides down to settle heavily in his stomach. He could light the candles upstairs for them, he thinks, but doesn’t raise his hand to do so. It’s their own fault they don’t have wands anymore. It’s all their fault. Everything. For a moment, he wants to hate them, hate them both, not just his father who got the Mark in the first place, but his mother too, for not stopping him. Either of them.

Then he remembers whose wand served him during battle - saved his life - remembers how Narcissa begged and pleaded with him before he swore his life to the Dark Lord, then for him, after. Remembers sobbing into the carpet in anticipation of a Crucio and hearing her voice, trembling only the slightest bit, asking to take his punishment upon herself, and remembers watching her scream and writhe beneath the curse, eyes glued to the horrific scene before him in sick relief, his father huddled beside him, Narcissa’s pain his torment.

His cheeks burn. He stands in the hall, nostrils flaring with harsh breaths, and hates himself too. He should’ve returned when the Mark burned, Crabbe and Goyle told him so, but he chose to stay in the castle, let the battle swallow him up and his mother’s wand with him, thinking Not me not me not me, I want to live, over and over, as if wanting was enough.

Bile burns in his throat. He should’ve given back her wand. She wouldn’t have wanted him to - that’s the thought he clung, clings to - but he should’ve. Defended her. That would’ve been noble.

But there’s nothing noble about war, he’s found. There’s only death, and pain, and choices he didn’t want to make until it was too late. He must live with that now, and he will, and he can, but tonight, tonight the thought stings.

He sighs deeply. Suddenly, the destroyed hall feels very lonely, as if he is the lone survivor of a horrible earthquake, all by himself in an upended world. Quickly, he moves to climb the stairs, wincing with every creak of the old wood.

Upstairs, it is dark too, and the candles in the hall are all burned down in their candelabra. They flicker meekly as Draco waves his wand, but die again instantly with a soft, hissing noise. Shivering, he walks more quickly, suddenly hating the silent emptiness of the house when for weeks, he wished to be alone, to be far removed from everyone and everything as his aunt paced back and forth inside his room, filling it with curses and her dark presence. Now that he can, he doesn’t want to go back there. Not yet. Tomorrow, when it’s light outside.

He peers inside his parents’ room, but finds they haven’t yet returned to it either. It was His room while the Manor was headquarters, His domain. By the quivering light of his wandtip, Draco can just make out the black, crusty stains on the silken carpets. Shuddering, he turns away and stumbles back to the door. The light flits across a grey, translucent shape on the floor, empty and crumbling with decay, and Draco jumps, recoils. It’s just a shell, he tells himself, panting in the hall. Just the snake’s skin. The snake is gone.

He is gone.

Draco knocks on five doors before he finds his parents in the guest room at the end of the hall, one of the few rooms that weren’t invaded. He’s trembling like a child in the darkness as he whispers the spell to unlock the door, not even caring what he might be interrupting. After all this time, the silence of the house is eerie. He can’t stand it.

His mother is peeling off his father’s blood-stained shirt when Draco shuffles inside. She glances up with a dark, hunted look in her eyes, and for a moment, he fears that she will send him away, but then she nods at him and smiles.

Relieved, he closes the door behind him, banishing the dark hall beyond. Narcissa has lit some candles. Black, charred matches are still smoking in a porcelain flowerpot, and the warm glow of the lights makes the small, sparse room seem almost cosy.

She takes her time examining her husband’s wounds, the long red angry lines that mar his back, the bruises on his chest, the swollen eye. Her mouth is a thin, tight line, but she doesn’t look away, and Draco fidgets by the door, wondering how she can stand this, touching the wet, oozing gashes, wiping the blood and grime like a nurse, rubbing potions into Lucius‘ skin. Draco just wants it all to go away. The war is over now. How are they supposed to forget it, with all these scars?

“Draco,” she finally says, calmly, “Let me see your face.” She waves him closer so she can take his head in her hands, turn it this way and that, and he leans in shamelessly and lets her caress his cheeks with cool, soft hands, stroke his hair as if he was a baby. “There,” she murmurs, and soothes the angry bruise around his nose with sweet-scented salve. “It will be gone by morning. Are you in pain?”

“No,” he says, lulled by her touch. Just tired, right down to his bones. His body aches with it, but when she smiles at him, he feels a little better. His mother hasn’t smiled in a long, long time.

“What about you?” Lucius moves gingerly, feeling his way around the room, bowed with pain like an old man, but his jaw is set with determination just like his wife’s, and the silent resentment with which he drags his injured body towards the bath makes Draco feel better, too. They’ll be all right; no matter what they’ve done, what he’s done, he’s glad for that.

“I’m fine,” Narcissa tells her husband gently. “He only gave me a jolt - painful, but no real damage.”

“I wish Potter hadn’t robbed me of the pleasure of killing Him myself,” Lucius growls.

His wife’s face hardens. “I don’t,” she says, and her voice is sharp. “Don’t be silly, Lucius.”

He huffs softly, but stands more upright under her stern look. “Well, I can’t help bemoaning the fact that we owe our lives to Potter now.”

“We’ll have to live with that,” she retorts. “And we will, quite comfortably, I think.”

“As soon as we’ve convinced the Ministry that we harbour no more ill will,” Lucius adds dryly, but there’s a ghost of a smile playing around his lips as he limps into the bathroom. “Tomorrow, my love, yes?”

“Yes. Tomorrow.” And she is moving again already, opening the window, pulling out drawers, inspecting the closet, fetching sheets and pillows and blankets, and Draco wonders where she finds the strength to even lift a finger. His own body is heavy with aches and pains. He remembers clutching at Potter as they soared up high above the Fiendfyre, thinking he was going to die, hearing Crabbe’s screams over the hellish crackle of the flames, and shudders. “Mother…what’s going to happen now?”

“You’ll sleep in my winter drawing room. It has a chaise longue that’s quite comfortable,” she announces, as if that was the answer to his question. “It’ll do for tonight.”

Draco nods uncertainly. “And then? What happens then? Tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow…” She lets out a soft sigh. “We’ll see, Draco. We’ll tidy up our house and assess the damage that has been done, and then we’ll find a way to fix it. We always do.”

He doesn’t think it could possibly be that easy. “But…we’ve lost!” he blurts.

“You think?” she counters, tartly.

“Well.” He fidgets. “Potter won,” he amends then. It shouldn’t make a difference, but it does. Anything is better than…better than Him. Even Potter.

“We’re alive,” Narcissa sighs. “All of us. I count that a success.”

It is, Draco supposes. It’s more than they could hope for, and yet… “So it’s all right? It’s…” He gestures vaguely, “enough?”

“Of course, darling.” She smiles. Strokes his cheek. “Or it will be, anyway. We’re alive. You don’t have to worry about anything else now.”

Draco can’t quite believe it, but for tonight, it’ll do. It’s enough so he can sleep.

On the other side of the hall there’s a study that Narcissa sometimes uses during the winter months. It has large windows on two walls that look out over the nightly garden, and it is cluttered with old, fragile-looking furniture. There aren’t many candles, but enough to light up all the corners of the room, peer behind the sofa and the armchair and find nothing.

He lies down on the soft chaise, hides his wand away under his pillow and stares up at the dark ceiling. His childhood bedroom has stars that still move around in their painted sky with Draco’s bed the centre of their universe and him the blazing, golden sun, but here, now, he savours the quiet stillness of the night, the peaceful solitude in which he doesn’t have to be anything, do anything, except breathe, and exist. Safe.

He thinks of his parents, safely locked away behind their door just like he is, then of his friends, wondering where they’ll sleep tonight, and if they’ll ever wake up again. He thinks of Pansy, who’d kissed him just that morning, but vanished by nightfall, abandoning him like Goyle.

Crabbe.

He tears his thoughts away from that with no little force. Pansy. Pansy. Maybe he should owl her, tell her that he’s survived. She’d want to know. Probably. He thinks. It would be a weird world if she didn’t, but then, the world has been weird and all wrong for a while now.

Potter’s won. That seems the most outrageous thing of all, but it’s true, and he gave back Draco’s wand, and maybe, maybe, things won’t be too bad now. It’s a strange thought, though. It’ll take a while getting used to.

In any case, Draco supposes, he’ll need allies, and ones who won’t care that he’s lost and doesn’t even mind it. He doesn’t think he can write to Blaise or Theo or even Goyle, but Pansy might understand.

A clock on the mantelpiece chimes midnight as he gets up again. By the light of his wandtip, he sits down at a desk with spindly little legs, dips a ridiculous pink quill into his mother’s flowery porcelain inkpot and begins to write to Pansy, whereever she is,

Well. I’m still alive.