"Explain."
"It's been three days, Mr. Malfoy."
"And?" he snarls, daring the old minister to look away. Gone is any semblance of diplomacy — it's been three days since he's last slept, three days since his life was upheaved — he cares little for decorum now.
"Please, sit."
Draco remains standing. After a beat, Kingsley sighs.
"As of October 13, 2010, Harry James Potter is presumed to have been killed in action. As such, the DMLE has decided - with approval from the Minister's Office - to cease search and rescue efforts for Auror Potter."
Draco's shakes his head. Harry's not dead. He isn't. Draco would know - he'd be able to feel it. He's trembling now, shaking with unbridled rage because they've decided it easier to declare his husband dead than search for a few more days.
"He's not dead."
"I understand your grief-"
"There's no body!" Draco explodes. "I'll prove you wrong. I'll find him."
"Mr. Malfoy -"
His magic responds before he can control it. A snow globe flies into the wall behind Kingsley, shards of glass and water and styrofoam flying, and for one glorious second, the Minister looks almost scared.
"It's Malfoy-Potter."
He storms back out, past the now cowering secretary and headed straight to the DMLE. He's going to find Harry, even if it's the last thing he does.
~0~
"You can let me go now," Harry murmurs, voice low, amused.
Harry's Auror's robes feel like velvet on his cheek, luxurious in a way that Ministry robes rarely are. He shakes his head, pressing his skin further into the fabric, engulfing himself in the smell of his husband, the scent of petrichor and magic and home.
"Shall we stay in bed all day?" he asks. Draco barely hears the question. He's too drowsy, too warm, too comfortable to fathom answering. He feels Harry's finger ghost over his face, across his cheek and down his jaw. Patient. Waiting.
"Yes," he mumbles, even though they both know he's incapable of it. They'll stay in bed as long as Draco can tolerate it. They'll make breakfast — or lunch, rather — together. Harry will make their coffees, and he'll make pancakes, or omelettes, or a quiche, or whatever Harry requests.
For a while, there's nothing but silence. The house groans and creaks as it settles around them. The bathroom sink gurgles. A bird chirps outside their window. He feels, more than hears, Harry's content sigh.
It's peaceful. He has half a mind to actually spend all day in bed, cuddled up, exchanging the occasional word. He's comfortable. Happy.
"Draco." He'd never liked the sound of his name, not really, never knew how delicate and adoring it could sound until it had fallen from Harry's lips. He wants to hear it over and over, drown in the way the sounds fall from Harry's lips. "I know you don't want to, but it's time."
He shakes his head again, burrowing further into his robes. He doesn't understand this insistence on getting up, especially when it's usually Harry who's begging for a lie-in. He's about to say as much, tease him about their role reversal when he feels it.
A brief flash of coldness.
It only lasts a second, then he's back in bed, warm and happy. He frowns to himself, wonders if he should say something, when it happens again.
Dread, cold and heavy, sinks in his chest.
He knows this. He knows what's next.
He feels the room begin to close in on him, begins to feel the first tendrils of panic in his chest because he recognizes this. Knows that the reason why his eyelids feel so heavy isn't because he's tired.
"Please, no." He clings harder, buries his head further into Harry's robes, breathing hard.
This is real, he tells himself, this is real, this is happening. If he can convince himself it's real, it'll be real. This will be real.
"Draco," Gods, how it hurts to hear his name said so gently now, "you can let go. I'm not here anymore."
A tear escapes his closed eyes, followed by another and another. Desperation and denial war with each other inside of him.
"No, no, no, don't say that," he whimpers, eyes screwed shut. There is nothing he can do to stop the onslaught of tears, nothing he can do to help the sob that bubbles out of his throat. His body shakes with sorrow. "If I keep holding you, I can keep you warm, I can keep you here."
Harry can't be gone, he tells himself. This is all a nightmare. He's going to wake up any moment now and Harry's snores are going to be shaking the walls and Draco won't even care because it will mean this isn't real.
There's a faint kiss placed on his forehead, "You've got to be brave for us."
But he doesn't want to be brave; he wants his husband there, with him.
"You're the brave one," he chokes out, words garbled by the ball of emotion clogging his throat. "You're not gone, Harry."
There is no response. There is no sweet caress of his hair, no kiss, no scent of the husband he once loved.
He wakes then, gasping, alone in a bed too big for him, face pressed to the singed Auror robe a red-eyed Ron Weasley had handed him two mornings ago.
"God damn it," he rasps, throat raw and tears falling across his face.
He closes his eyes against the onslaught of pain, tries to breathe through the crushing weight of his grief.
What a cruel way to wake.
~0~
"You promised," he cries, fingers tight around his tumbler, "you promised to come back!"
Harry only beams back at him, happy, carefree, unaware of the fury pulsing in Draco's veins.
"How could you leave me alone?" He hurls the tumbler into the picture of their wedding day, the glass shattering against Harry's face, and it should make him feel something — anything — to see Harry's face dripping with firewhiskey but it does nothing to soothe the beast roaring in his chest.
He lunges for their wedding china next, ripping the cabinet open and feeling only a morsel of satisfaction at the sharp, sudden noise that the delicate cups and plates make when they break.
It is not enough.
Rage replaces his blood, sends his magic haywire, destroys their things in the name of grief. Souvenirs turn to ash, Harry's favorite mugs become fine dust, pictures are ripped apart.
He curses Harry for being so idiotically brave, for making promises he had no intention of keeping — promises to be safe, to come back, to be together, Forever.
Loathes him, most of all, for making Draco actually believe those words.
He cries and yells and burns with a fiery inferno no Hell could ever know, angry with everyone and everything for the injustice he's meant to endure.
He stumbles outside, mad and bleeding, and screams into the night sky, demanding answers from the Universe, from Merlin and Morgana, from every God and Goddess to have ever lived and feels fury explode in his veins when none answers.
He's all too aware of their pity, their disdain at his inability to process something so natural. But he refuses to be cowed, refuses to douse the flames of his ire because that means he's given up, that he's accepted what happened.
His anger knows no bounds, has no limits. He spurns those who reach out to him, turns away owls, closes off the Floo, sends Howlers to those he deems responsible: Robards, Kingsley, Weasley. The malice of his youth reignites in his breast, no longer quelled by his lover's gentle words and the desire to be Good, to be worthy.
"You need help," someone says from somewhere behind him — Granger — and his anger burns brighter, stronger. "I know it hurts and -"
"You know nothing."
He whirls to face her, forces her to see the destruction that loss has wrought unto him. She has lost a friend - a best friend, perhaps - but he has lost everything.
She doesn't so much as flinch at the sight of his gaunt face, the bruises that mar his face, or the filth that sits on his skin. Instead, her eyes soften, dancing with a pity that Draco neither wants nor appreciates.
"Draco, you're not coping well w -"
"Do not come here," he hisses, "and tell me how to grieve."
"Not when your husband is the reason mine died," he adds, words laden with blame.
It is the first time he's actually said it, the first time he's been callous enough to use it with the intention of hurting her. She flinches, looks away, because she knows it's true. Everyone knows how Harry Potter died now.
Knows that it was his partner — no, his best friend — who got him killed.
But Hermione is more tenacious than he'd remembered, or perhaps more accustomed to his acerbity, because she straightens up, eyes tight around the edges.
"Harry would be so disappointed to see you like this."
His magic — erratic since the day Harry was declared dead — floods his body, bright with anger. It feels like molten lava, fills him with red. He could control it. He could rein it back in, calm his temper, put the proverbial lid back on his magic.
He does not.
She shrieks when the lightbulbs explode, stares at him with wide eyes tinged with just enough fear to make Draco feel superior.
They're shrouded in darkness, the only light that of the moon, the only sound that of tinkering of glass shards falling around them.
"Leave, Granger." His voice is raw, exposed like nerves on flayed skin. "Leave!"
She looks at him as if he doesn't know him — and she doesn't, not really — she knows the soft version Harry had molded him into, knows not the Draco he's buried deep within. She hesitates, opens her mouth, and seeing the way Draco's eyes alight, closes it.
He's won again, turning her away, wearing her down just a bit more until she stops coming back altogether. Good.
Perhaps she will soon realize his stubbornness, his acerbity will outlast her patience and concern each and every time.
He watches her leave through the window, mobile out and likely already dialing Weasley, who'll console her while she weeps, who'll hold her and support her because he's not dead.
Something dark worms into his heart, makes him vow to live to see her feel it too. To have only her husband's robes as a momento to his life and see how she deals with the loss, to see if she does not give in to lunacy just like he has. To see if she copes well.
Perhaps his thoughts should scare him — there was a time Granger was almost a friend to him — but that time is long gone. He now revels in his monstrousness.
The darkness in him keeps him company.
"How are you getting on?" Robards asks him, after managing to ambush him and force his way into a house he has no right to be in.
A Draco of another time might have apologized for the state of the house — the unwashed dishes, the dirty floors, the broken furniture and ripped pictures — but that Draco no longer exists. He watches Robards take it in, watches the emotions flit through his eyes — shock, disgust, pity — and hates him all the more for his judgement.
He ignores the question, his eyes falling on the box that Robards brought with him.
There's a picture of Harry and him on their honeymoon at the top. Another of them on their trip to New York. Beneath, he'll find more, he's sure. Some of Teddy and others of Granger and Weasley. Knick knacks and souvenirs they'd bought on their holidays.
Harry's desk cleared out.
"I'm sorry for your loss," Robards says, awkward and unsure, when he sees what Draco's looking at. He's used to the polished, refined Draco Malfoy who attended galas with his best Auror, the one who engaged in small talk and pleasantries, the one who was easy to talk to.
He does not know what to do with the quiet, angry man before him.
"I'm sorry it wasn't you instead." Feels not even a lick of satisfaction when Gawain flinches. It's not enough. It's never enough. He wants them to suffer as he has, understand what he has lost, what he must go on without. It will never be enough.
The Prophet writes about him. The tormented widower of the Wizarding World's Saviour. Word spreads about his madness, the anger that never abates, the power he wields when he's deep in his grief. He cares for none of it.
He avoids sleep, blaring music, drinking potions of dubious legality in its stead because he cannot bear to have Harry ripped away each time he wakes.
He's slept maybe two, three hours the day Weasley comes to him, looking like the proverbial dog with its tail between its legs. He looks like Draco feels — worn, devastated. The mad thing inside him rages, wants to shake Weasley and ask him what right he has to mourn the man he led to his death.
They sit on the porch, watch the rain in silence, because Draco refuses to let him inside, or to be the first to speak. Minutes, maybe hours go by, and he's about to doze off when Weasley finally speaks.
"We're worried for you, you know."
Draco says nothing. Tightens his fingers around the arm of his seat, and bites back the insults on the tip of his tongue.
"I promised Ha- I promised him I'd look after you if - if anything happened."
"Just as you promised me you'd keep him safe." His voice is deceptively soft, but it lands just as well.
A wounded noise escapes Weasley, like the sound of someone getting punched in the gut, and Draco doesn't have to look over to know there are tears in his eyes.
"I'm sorry, Draco. I really am," and he sounds it too. He sounds miserable, and Draco knows Weasley blames himself. Probably lives that last day over and over, kicking himself over the million things he should've done but didn't.
"You're not. But you will be."
He stands and heads inside, knowing that the broken man beside him is too much of a coward to follow.
Draco cannot bring himself to feel bad for any of it. It satisfies the darkness inside of him, just a little bit, to hurt the people who failed his husband.
Even if it does little to soothe the hurt he carries.
~0~
His grief demands unreasonable things; things he knows are impossible, but that he want to believe are real - that they'll work for him.
He implores the same deities he'd raged at, brings them beautiful offerings of fruit and blood and sweet wines; prepares and performs long forgotten rituals, entices them with the promise of being a devoted worshipper in return for their help.
"Please," he whispers, his forehead pressed to the damp earth, tears dripping into the soil, "please help me." It is the last ritual he has prepared, the last deity he has come to supplicate to. Hope, foolish and vain, flickers in his breast.
It doesn't work.
His offerings, much like his ire, are ignored.
So he throws himself into research; finds, buys, or steals books on ancient voodoo and shamans and dark magic. Reaches out to his father's old friends - wizards with extensive private libraries and dubious morals. Makes unsavory acquaintances and questionable purchases and none of it fazes him because he needs Harry.
It pays off.
"What you want is not worth this," a woman's voice hisses, low and urgent with warning. "Leave. This is not the place for you."
He can barely make out the silhouette of her hunched figured, but he looks at her filthy, emaciated figure and knows that she's warning him against the very thing she's used and abused to get what she's desired. Perhaps, if he were in a different state of mind, he'd heed her warning for what it was.
But he's blinded by the promise of the impossible, too desperate for his suffering to end, too lost in grief to turn back now.
"Listen to me," she all but pleads, dragging herself closer to him. "Nothing is worth making deals like this — nothing."
Before he can answer, an ominous energy fills the room, heavy and oppressive, and Draco has to fight a shudder of revulsion. The creature — the thing — reeks of rot, a mixture of decaying flesh and decomposing fruit.
He nearly retches at the smell.
The woman behind him whimpers like a scared animal.
"What is it that you seek?" it asks, husky and dark. It's the voice of evil, the voice of something Draco, with his troubled past, has never dared to touch.
Until now.
"Tell me how to bring him back."
"Foolish boy. He won't come back as h-" a yawning silence stretches out where the woman's trembling voice once lay.
Perhaps he should ask where she's gone, what they've done to her. Harry would've, because Harry was brave and selfless and kind — he would've let Draco rest in eternal peace, should the roles have been reversed — but he is not Harry.
No, he is selfish and scared and monstrous, made that way by his grief. He does not ask after her, does not spare her a further thought, because he's close, so close to getting the answers he seeks.
He feels something in his brain, a nudge not unlike those of a Legilimens, and he does not resist it. Projects memories of Harry — at school, at home, at Sunday dinner with the Weasley's — and of his smile, his sleeping face, his ire, his stubbornness, his character.
They flood his mind, easy to do because it is all he thinks of these days.
"I can tell you how to bring him back-" hope flares, bright and heady in his chest "-for a price."
He thinks of Potter saving him from the fiendfyre. Of their slow friendship after... after the war and the funerals and the sleepless nights fighting grief. Of when Potter became Harry, when Harry became Harry.
Remembers him on one knee, eyes earnest and hopeful, his hair wet and flat against his forehead, asking him to marry him in the middle of a storm.
Recalls Harry's profile against the rising sun — that morning before his mission — a line of drool drying on his cheek, his chest rising and falling in time with his snores, curls a riot against his pillow. How he'd blinked himself awake, turned his hazy green eyes to him, and how Draco had felt that bloom of sheer adoration in his chest.
He doesn't hesitate.
"Anything."
~0~
"And afterwards?"
"Go home. Do not linger. Do not look back. Leave a trail of cemetery soil on your way and light a white candle in your kitchen. Wait for him."
"What if it doesn't w-"
"Believe," the voice rasps. He feels warm breath of his cheek, reeking of blood and decay and malice, "Believe or lose him forever."
~0~
Before he leaves, arms inked with hastily penned instructions, the voice tells him one more thing.
"An empty grave calls to the one who left it."
The knowledge sits heavy in his stomach, "He'll want to go back."
There's a sound, like that of chains dragging across a cement floor, and he realizes it's the creature's laugh.
"An empty grave calls to the one who left it."
~0~
He hears him. Hears the crunch of footsteps behind him and wants, desperately, to look back, to make sure it really is him.
Do not look back.
Do not look back.
Do not look back.
Instead he crouches lower, makes sure the cemetery soil remains in a long, uninterrupted line. He cannot bear to come so close and lose him again.
It's just after midnight when he lights the white candle, and a few minutes after that, that he hears those same footsteps he used to take for granted make their way through the hallway.
It nearly does him in to hear them, to recognize the sound of his boots, to think that he might've gone his entire life without hearing them again.
His entire body trembles. He stands on the precipice of something great, ready to pitch forward. Finally, after what feels like an eternity, it happens.
He's there.
Harry stands in the doorway to their kitchen, gray and weak, face smeared with remanants of mortuary makeup and dirt, but impossibly alive. Draco's knees buckle. He's done it. He's done something terrible, something awful and impossible and it had worked.
For the first time in weeks, his heart beats with something other than grief. A sob escapes him.
"Dra-?"
He flies across the kitchen, wipes the dirt off of Harry's face with trembling hands, swallowing down another sob as his hands flit over his husband's form, making sure that yes, he's really there and it isn't just another cruel dream he'll wake up from.
His throat seizes, choked up with so much emotion that he cannot form a single word. He throws himself against Harry, sobs at the feel of him in his arms — his real, tangible form and not a cruel trick of his imagination — and swears he'll never take this for granted again.
So lost in his relief, it takes him an embarrassingly long time to realize that something isn't right.
"Harry?" He pulls back, sees the shock on Harry's face and follows his husband's gaze. His eyes rove over the mess of their counter space, the mortars and pestles, the dried herbs littering the wooden counters, the cracked egg shells, the bloody livers and brains and hearts of several dead animals. Remnants of fire and ash, cauldrons containing prohibited substances. All the materials he'd painstakingly tracked down.
All the evidence he'd failed to dispose of in his haste to get his husband back.
Hands — hands he'd dreamt of — grip his arms, horrified green eyes meet his. "What did you do?"
"I did what I had to," Draco whispers. "I brought you back."