Celestial Being

Draco wasn’t dying.

Sure, he still felt like shit, but after two days of nearly constant sleep, and an inspection by Cousin Xeno and the castle surgeon, the consensus was he would live. The surgeon had sterner words than Xeno about not galavanting all over the place, which carried the risk of pulling open internal things that may not have healed. Xeno wasn’t stern, but he did slip into his pronouncement that the prince had words with Draco’s mother and both of them agreed that assigning guards to his door was for the best. What sort of guards? The sort that kept out anyone his mother didn’t trust to look after Draco’s health.

It was a tad bit anticlimactic, not dying. It robbed being wounded of flair. Draco would just go on slowly healing, measuring progress by whether he could pull himself out of bed on his own to relieve himself. George would find that funny, at least, but he wasn’t allowed to visit.

Teddy visited, thank god, as did Draco’s mother. They offered equal news from the outside world, for their own individual reasons. Truly, Teddy often shared more. Sometimes Draco begged his mother to tell him what was happening. What was wrong. Why was the prince there, where had the king gone, and what was the threat of war. His mother soothed him and assured him all was well, the king was addressing it. She had told Draco the same lies in his youth, when it was King Voldermort in peril. Or causing peril.

Mostly Draco rested. He hated that he needed it. So much was happening out beyond the walls, but all he could do was give in to his sagging eyes and succumb to unconsciousness.

It wasn’t so different from the early days of his new life. He had hated being obsolete then as well. He hadn’t realized when he’d carved his way into purpose and power in this new life. That was silly of him, since everyone else had. Perhaps he couldn’t see it because it was power built upon trust and caring. In doing so, he allowed other people to care back, until he was surrounded by people who loved him and wanted him at their side. He’d never seen anyone do that before and didn’t recognize it in his own actions. It was foolish to have been given a second chance and to take it all for granted. He hadn’t thought he was taking it for granted.

Draco hadn’t been old enough, back then, to really matter in the war. His father had ensured he’d never be sent to battle. There had been an attempt to train him in strategy under the assumption that he’d eventually stand at his father’s side in directing armies. It didn’t matter that their kingdom hadn’t survived long enough for Draco to lead it, he’d still always known he would, and he had lorded that fact over others. He was in a perpetual state of youthful indiscretion, but with enough power that no one told him to stop. He could see now that all the games he’d played in his youth had been petty and unimportant, but they’d been important to him, and he’d been in the center of everything. It felt natural, like breathing.

Draco remembered now, stuck in his room, that it wasn’t his place to be important. It was no longer his place to be in the middle of the kingdom’s grand decisions. That future was stripped from him. He could be bold and flamboyant behind a mask. He could be silly and bombastic with children. When he acted that way in the real world, with the courtiers and the kingdoms’ overseers, all the people wiser than him chided his actions. After all, where had his recklessness gotten him? Stabbed, and stuck in this bed, while the people who really mattered were out there, knowing what was happening, and he could only hope they were making the right decisions.

He half imagined climbing out of his bed and crawling from the room with a righteous determination to know for certain the right things were being done. Even if his body could handle that, he’d have to get past his mother and the guards she’d set on him to stop him. He’d have to face how, if he arrived, everyone there would see his actions as foolish. Anger simmered inside him at the barriers he could not break through.

There was a war inside of him. He had no power, he was physically restrained, but the people he loved were at risk. How could he do nothing? How could he lay in his bed, smothered in ignorance, and not go mad?

So he’d beg his mother for news. Surely she knew something she wouldn’t say. If she did, her lips were sealed.

She was so fond of her mantras. All would be well, she said. The king would handle it.

“Handle it like Voldermort did?” The words just bubbled out of Draco, from a well of resentment so deep he’d forgotten it lurked inside him.

Narcissa’s soft concern didn’t falter. She had withstood harsher men than Draco. “Hush, dear. You must focus on getting better.”

She’d said it too many times that it no longer rang true. “What good is getting better when the next person comes to kill me?” He couldn't tell if he was angry at King Harry who had slashed him, or Colton who’d stabbed deepest, or some third party who’d hurt him the most.

“We are safe here, the king and his advisors will keep us safe.”

Those were words from his childhood that now stung like barbs. “Like Father kept us safe?” His father had promised that if they only were obedient the king would keep them safe. He’d promised it, and Draco had turned away from the gruesome reality of court because he believed by doing so such horrors would never touch him. His own cowardice disgusted him and fueled his anger more.

Draco’s mother didn’t flinch from Draco’s anger. She was implacable. “King Harry was strong enough to defeat King Voldermort, he is strong enough to protect this country.”

“How do you know?” Draco demanded. “Didn’t you think Voldemort strong, before? Do you believe these things or are they excuses and lies?”

Nothing changed on Narcissa’s face, but something flared behind her eyes. “We must believe it. It is our role to believe it. When we believe in them we make them stronger. They need us.”

“But they were wrong!” Draco shouted. It had been years since he shouted at his mother. Not since he was a spoiled child who didn’t understand what real anger was. It tore from his chest and once loose he couldn’t stop it. “Father was wrong! King Voldermort was wrong! You were wrong! We were facing ruin, all of us, and they needed someone to tell them to stop.”

“Some things can’t be stopped.” Narcissa’s wide eyes was the only crack in her poise. “We cannot all be the great men in power. For the rest of us, our strength is in having faith. When we have faith in those we serve we make them stronger.”

“Faith?” Draco barked. “Faith in what? A sadistic madman, or the fool who thought he could benefit from the pain Voldermort inflicted?”

This time Narcissa closed her eyes so Draco couldn’t see what lay in their depths. “Lucious did the best he could,” she insisted.

“It wasn’t good enough!” So what if Draco sounded like a child when he said it. He had been a child and his parents had failed him. “How could that be his best? You were there, mother, you saw it. Was that our best? Is that what we are? How do you put your faith in that?”

“They are dead!” Narcissa finally shouted. “They are dead. It is done. We must move forward. We live by the grace of the king, and we must trust in him.”

“But what if he’s wrong!” Draco couldn’t help but ask. “Voldermort was wrong, and you followed him. King Harry isn’t someone special. He’s just a man. Honestly, a fairly angry and impulsive man. He doesn’t even know who to trust. He put Slughorn in charge of his money, and look where that got him. Trusting him is foolish. Stowing away in this room is foolish. Anything could happen while we sit in here and we’re not doing anything about it.” Draco’s lungs burned from shouting and he had to heave for air. He was trapped. This room was a trap. The life, cast out of the power and influence the Malfoy’s once held was a trap.

“Oh, Draco,” Narcissa leaned forward to cup his face. “I thought you had learned. It is not your place to interfere with the work of lords and kings.”

Draco squeezed his eyes shut to block out tears. It was true, Draco was no one, but when had that stopped him? “You never taught me to learn my place.”

Narcissa rubbed an escaped tear off Draco’s cheek. “I did the best I could.” There was no repentance. His mother had lost her kingdom and her husband, and still she wasn’t sorry. She would bend and beg to save her son, because she loved him more than herself, but that was as far as her penance went. Draco had thought his resentment ran deep, but he saw now that his mother kept hers deep in her heart. Narcissa didn’t lash out like Draco. She planted her anger in the ground and grew poison. She stored her rage so it would always be with her. Narcissa may play house with her sister and great-nephew, but it had not healed what severed when her side had lost. Just as much as Draco, in her heart, she was meant to be great. She was still the beautiful girl who’d risen above all to capture the heart of a duke. She was the lady of court, who commanded her peers because King Voldermort couldn’t keep a queen alive. She had chosen, just as clearly as Draco’s father, to wield power, and her tool had been making others believe in powerful, foolish men. All the grace and fortitude could not hide it from Draco now. He could yell, and cry, and beg, and his mother would never be sorry that she had chosen greatness over being good.

No wonder her best had not been good enough. Narcissa could not teach Draco to settle because she would not dream of Draco as anything less than his full potential. She only found joy when he thrived. She only looked herself back in the castle where she belonged.

For all Draco loved her, he couldn’t restrain his rage. It wasn’t all for her, but his father was dead and couldn’t face Draco’s anger himself. Draco’s parents had betrayed him. They had promised he would be safe if he only complied. They had asked Draco not to worry, not to speak out. He had listened to them. Look where that got him. They had lost, they had failed, and they weren’t even sorry. Lucius had kneeled before the executioner without letting go of his pride.

Draco didn’t want to be that way. He didn’t want to need that power. He didn’t want to yearn for it. He just wanted to be safe, with all of his friends and family, and feel like all those lords and kings in power would protect them. And right now something was wrong. It wasn’t in him to stay silent and just have faith. It wasn’t in him to be obedient.

Maybe his mother would never understand. Maybe loving Draco was the best she could do. But she wanted him to be great, and Draco could work with that. After all, there was no greatness to be had hiding away in this room.