Death in the Family
Across the great hall, Harry saw him, limping, barely able to stand. He bolted over to Draco. As he reached him, Draco collapsed. Harry dived to catch him. He landed in Harry's arms, bleeding and choking.
"Are you…Are you going to be okay?" Harry had asked. Draco almost chuckled, before he realized that it was not funny at all.
"Do I-" the sentence was interrupted by the blood that spewed out of his mouth. "Do I look like I'll be okay, Potter?"
Harry ran his fingers through Draco's hair. There was almost no trace of blonde in his hair, all of it being stained with red.
"My parents. Where are they?" Draco had stuttered. Harry grabbed his hand. It felt like ice. "They're okay. They're safe." He responded. Draco almost smiled. "I'm glad…"
As he slipped out of consciousness, he heard someone yell his name. Through his darkening eyesight, he saw Harry turn to the other side of the room. He wasn't imagining it. Harry had heard it too.
"Father…." he whispered. Red blood tainted the stone floor. It flowed and flowed, until it put some color into the gray of the world. And in that moment, Draco Malfoy moved no more.
A hand laid on Harry’s shoulder. Lucius Malfoy, his face whiter than ever, completely shocked. They arrived too late. Their son was dead.
"My son, my beautiful son.." Lucius whispered. "He can't be gone, he can't be…" his words were almost unintelligible through his stutters. He leaned down and scooped up the body from Harry's arms. He began to hyperventilate, before taking a deep breath… and letting out an earth shattering cry. A cry of remorse, despair, regret, but mostly a cry of alert. Alert to anyone that was willing to end him. That he had given up, that he no longer wanted to live. It was over. Their son was dead, and he preferred to be murdered, to be dead along with him, than live in a world without Draco.
Just as they thought it was over, he let out another scream, and another, until he could take it no longer and his voice snapped like a feeble twig, dissolving into agonized sobs.
But no one heard him. No one turned to spare a passing glance at the father relaying his agony at the death of his heir. No one that he wanted to hear it, at least.
No one that could close his storybook forever.
He prayed, even though he put his faith in no gods, that he would die there, of a curse, a heart attack, anything that would take him out. He couldn't live. Not like this.
He thought of his son's face. His voice. The agony Draco had endured because of him. The last words he had spoken to him before Draco left for hogwarts. He could barely force them out. "Son." It replayed in his mind. "Please....
Be careful."
It was Lucius who had not been careful. It was Lucius that had caused his son's death. And there he sat, clutching a dead body, clinging on to a fleeting, delusional feeling that there could possibly be any life left in the shell of what was once his boy.
Something about the situation felt familiar. Like a story he had seen. One that had been recounted to him before. Except he wasn't on the sidelines. He was the main focus.
He never thought he would suffer the same tragedy as Amos Diggory. He thought naively that if he obeyed Voldemort no harm from his side would befall them. But here he was, clutching the corpse of his son on the floor, body maimed by Death Eaters and covered in hardened crimson. His perfect boy.
He tried to shut the thought out of his mind, but he recognized the teeth marks on his son's brutalized arm. The werewolf. Greyback. He would know them anywhere.
To think that that man, if you could even call it that, had been so close to his son, in their HOME….
It made him want to scream once more, but not as a cry for death. As a release for all of his remaining anger at the injustices of the world.
But it would do nothing. He was too weak. He couldn't fix it this time. His old friend was right.
Life truly wasn't fair.