Vol de Mort

Vol de Mort

For as long as he could remember, Draco had had a fascination with death.

The earliest incident had been when he was three or four; he'd spotted a giant blue, metallic-colored beetle on the ground and immediately started wailing. The pale, translucent wings twitched slightly, yet they made an unpleasant whirring, whining noise. Narcissa had been in the room and she'd glanced over at it with a bored exasperation, piercing the beetle with the heel of her shoe. There was a crunching noise, then the beetle was still.

He had been too young to really understand what had happened, only sensing that something was different. A wing had fallen off and he poked it with one finger; it broke and lay there in two pieces next to the body. Death had left a faint, brownish-black mark on the pile rug that reminded Draco everytime he played in there until one day, a house-elf scrubbed it out and Draco forgot about the incident altogether.

On Draco's sixth birthday at the manor, Lucius had taken him on one of his hunting trips. It had been a brutally cold day, the air numbing his fingers like anesthetic and the wind grabbing hold in every corner of exposed body. But Lucius had seen something and Draco had looked on, fascinated. The quickest flash of red, and he had drawn out the bow in one fluid movement, the release as swift and fatal as Avada Kedavra. In one brilliant moment, the arrowhad rooted out its target and a bird had fallen out onto the snow like freshly fallen blood.

Draco had run towards the fallen bird, picking it up by its neck. It bled all over him, ruining his jacket and shoes. The bird was still warm, and there was the faintest tremor in its body as he held it against his chest like a fiercely won prize, Lucius looking on. And then that tremor was gone, passed; he held it out away from him, shaking it, finally beating it down into the snow, willing that shiver to come back into its body but it was gone. Crimson feathers were scattered onto the white ground, seeds cast to an uncaring, burdened land.

The bird was dead.

When summer came again at the Manor, Narcissa let him watch the careful cultivation of the gardens as he licked an ice cream cone. Roses the color of the bird, hissing flytraps, the dainty, demure flowers she loved to tuck into her pale hair. There was one flower, however, that refused to live. No matter how much fussing she put into it, Draco noticed that its petals fell, more as the days passed, its leaves curling, blackening, like an isolated blight while the other plants flourished.

One day, the flower was gone. When he asked her where it had gone, she had told him it had died. He was confused; plants could die as well as animals and people? And Narcissa had told him that everything could die.

"Could I die?" he had asked, a childish treble in his voice, his ice cream forming sticky pools on the front of his shirt.

"We can all die. Except for a few." She hadn't elaborated any further.

His friend at the time was Annabelle, a dark haired, pale eyed little girl with a sad face. She wore giant, lace covered frocks when she came to visit and she reminded Draco of a porcelain doll - empty, beautiful, behind glass. He told her about the plant and about what his mother had said.

"I will never die," she had informed him confidently.

He felt an odd thrill. "Really?"

"My mother says so and she's always right."

"How do people die, anyway?"

She thought for a moment, her lashes making a dark shadow below her eyes. "I think you die when you fall from something high."

"Does that mean you can jump off and not die?"

Annabelle had smiled, the last smile she would ever make, and her eyes seemed to glitter. "Let's go up to the tower."

And he had helped her; he had brought the wooden stool and watched the dizzying height from above. It was autumn now and a dreary-sad quality was creeping into the vines, the foliage, the first start of winter where the threshold had not yet been crossed from one season to the next. He propped her up and saw her thin, white legs, his hands suddenly brushing her lace socks.

She looked back at him. "I won't die, you'll see."

Draco was afraid all of a sudden - very afraid, but oddly excited. His heart raced and he tasted something in his mouth, a sour-sweet, like sugary lemonade and bile, his cheeks flushing. Annabelle crouched on the sill and, with an awkward gasp, fell down.

He rushed to the window to watch her fall. For a moment, she really did look like a porcelain doll. Her skirts fanned out around her, riding up her waist, then with a grounding force, she broke on the rocks beneath her.

Lucius had sealed off the tower after that, and Draco had retreated to his rooms, not quite understanding what had happened. He wished Annabelle would visit again but he only saw her once more and she was sleeping and he wasn't sure why everyone was dark and crying and why he had to wear black. Annabelle wasn't any fun when she was sleeping, he decided, and asked her mother why she didn't want to play. The woman with a black net veil over her face just ignored him, rocking slowly back and forth.