Chapter 7
Draco went to bed that night and thought of Harry.
Harry.
Just saying his name like that made his cheeks heat. He thought of Harry in his overalls and his beaten-up boots and Harry with a child on his hip or a baby strapped to his chest or a beanie on his curls. Harry in the countryside, just as pretty as the fields around him, just as important, just as divine.
It wasn’t until about one in the morning that Draco remembered he went home in two and a half weeks. For the first time since he had left his little flat, the idea of going back filled him with coldness instead of warm. There was no Harry in France.
Oh, god, there was no Harry in France.
Draco wanted to cry again. There was no Harry in France.
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The feeling of melancholy that settled over him that night remained in the morning. Not even closing his eyes and thinking of his river helped, because all he could picture was Harry, his jeans rolled up, wading in the shallows. He would fit in so well to Draco’s little life in France.
But Harry had a Big life here in England, and Draco would never be so cruel as to even think of asking Harry to leave the nest he had made. His mother informed him at breakfast that Draco had the day to do with as he wished, and his first thought was that he wanted to see Harry, but he couldn’t let himself be so transparent, he couldn’t be so vulnerable as to make his feelings guess-able, so instead he decided to walk around the grounds.
He had missed them, he realised, once he was out there. He walked to the very edge of the Malfoy land, to the copse of trees that he used to play in as a boy, when he managed to escape the house-elves. There was the lake, where he had learned to swim. The meadow where he had read and brooded as a teenager. The meadow where he had had his first kiss with Daphne Greengrass when he was fourteen and their parents were discussing marriage contracts.
He went to the woods, walking the rough, rocky path through the close-growing trees. He saw small squirrels and mice run around, blackbirds in the branches. He had forgotten how lovely England could be, too. He breathed in the clean, country air and felt the freshness coat his lungs.
He would have to find a little woods like this in France, for him to walk in. maybe he could ward it so it was his and his only, like a garden, his own space. These woods had felt like his kingdom, when he was a boy. He had leapt from log to log, making friends with mice and declaring himself King, getting mud and moss and grass stains on his robes.
He missed that little boy.
Who he had been as a teenager had been a monster, but that little boy had been a King, and now Draco felt like nobody.
What a set of lives to live.
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He and his mother dined in stiff awkwardness that evening. Back with her and no buffer he had remembered again the tenderness she had shown to Harry’s children, a tenderness he had never been graced with as a child.
He had wanted storybooks. He saw them at the Zabini estate as a child, and he had asked for them. His mother had said they were too frivolous for the likes of a Malfoy. His father had said nothing, but his look had conveyed disdain enough.
He had wanted the sort of mother who read story books, and made biscuits, and he had never had her, but clearly Narcissa could have been her. The ability was there this whole time, it just took children other than Draco- other than her own- to bring it out in her.
As Draco ate it felt like there was a bleeding wound in his chest. He had not expected to be reminded so strongly of his childhood, and it felt like a gaping hole; a bullet wound that he couldn’t heal- didn’t know how to heal.
He went to bed the minute his knife and fork hit the plate. His mother didn’t say a word.
He spent his night wondering what it was that made Narcissa be maternal for other children, but not him, never him. As the tears flowed, he tried to remind himself that his mother had lied to Voldemort- Voldemort- to save him, out of love for him, but that felt so far away when she had never read him story books. She had never played in the woods with him, or even watched him. She had remained in the house and scolded him when he returned with dirty robes and scratched knees.
If his mother loved him enough to lie to Voldemort, she should have loved him enough for storybooks.