Fairy Gold

When they told me, ever so kindly, so as not to shock me....I didn't feel anything. I walked out of the room with an excuse....they let me go, sympathetic murmurs behind me...and down these corridors that I've walked for twenty-five years. The portraits said nothing. There is nothing to say to death, to its finality. He died as I thought he would, with blood on his hands. The only grace is that the fortune and the Manor are still intact, although I have absolutely no faith in them staying...sharks always circle when they smell blood in the water, and the Ministry is full of sharks.

Of course, it's now that I'm grateful to Papa and his insistence on those long tiresome sessions with the goblins there at Gringotts, providing for every contingency, keeping DeVries money for the DeVries. Whatever may happen, I will be comfortable...rich, actually. And I'm not so old. My grandmother lived to one hundred eighty...forty-three is still young.

Draco shut himself in his father's study after dinner. There were a pile of condolences on the desk...I suppose he's going to answer them. Something to do. Or he may get drunk. At least, when he drinks, he locks himself in the room, and blames no one else for his hangover. Better than....No. I will not go there.

It is a blessing that he did not insist we share a bedroom. My room is mine with no memories hanging in the folds of the bed hangings, cool green and silver and I move like a naiad through it. The bed is turned down, and hanging there on the closet door, ready for tomorrow, are my robes. At least I look good in black. He always did. He was so beautiful, my dark angel. It would have been easier if he wasn't.

I drop into a chair, and sigh. Some emotion is roiling in me, and I don't know what it is. What will I say tomorrow? What is there to say? He was my husband. I loved him with a strange and desperate worshipping hatred that is too sharp edged for elegies and the veils of society. He would say he gave me all I wanted. I say he took it away. His gifts were always of fairy gold, and of pain.

There were no more children after Draco. He wished no more, and so it was thus. Would a daughter have been less a cold Malfoy, more a DeVries? There was a long moment tonight when our wounded spirits, satellites whose sun has been cast into darkness, would have pulled us into each other's arms to weep. But he stepped back and away. I don't ask why. I know. Lucius never had to take anything he wanted by force. People gave it, freely, out of love. Or what they thought was love. I remember his eyes at breakfast the next morning. It broke my heart. But he would have killed us both with a cool smile, and, at that point, I wanted to live. I wanted him to live.

There's so much I wish I could say to him....Which of them, I don't know. Draco is not his father's son, not in all ways. But my lovely silver son, he warped and twisted him to his own ends, and what have you for it now, Lucius? Where did it get you?

I realize I am shouting at the walls, and stop. How undignified. But my hands are shaking. Damn him. Damn all of them. It wasn't fair. Ever. I stalk into the bathroom, and find the little cabinet with the pale-peach potion inside. Of course, there's plenty in there. Lucius made sure of that. Damn him. One addiction to replace another.

I take out a vial. Tomorrow, when all the guests leave, I'll send an owl down to my solicitor, and have him find me a flat in London. The thought goes well with the soothing taste of spice and peaches in my mouth. The potion spreads its soothing wave of relaxation through me, and I let it, for the last time. I swear it. Never again shall I take the easy way out.

Perhaps now I can sleep. I need to. I'll look like hell otherwise. But if I do, it won't matter. I was widowed yesterday...Perhaps they'll take it for grief.