Lost

She told me many things over the years. Some of them were things I didn't want to hear, but she always told me.

Her words changed me. I can't remember what she said that began the change, but I know the words were hers.

She told me many things, but my I cannot remember them all. I've no clue whether it's because they were said so long ago or if it's my old age that makes me forget. Perhaps, she has just said too many things for me to remember them all.

There is one thing she said to me that I never want to forget. I was seventeen when she said it, and I can still hear her words resounding in my mind.

"Draco, the caterpillar thought it's world was over. And then it changed into a butterfly."

At that time, I was just like the caterpillar she spoke of. I felt my world was over, my future had been set in stone. I would become as cold and as empty as my father.

But she showed me that things could change. Taught me to believe that the world would keep on spinning, and that I could decide my own fate.

With the knowledge that she gave me, I took control of my life. I turned away from the darkness that had consumed my father from the festering inside to the cold, icy outside. I refused to allow myself to turn out the way he did. Decided to fight against the darkness, with the hope that I would be pushed towards becoming a person content with who they are, who they were.

Her words helped me to do something that my father was never capable of doing. I was able to love someone with my entire being. She became like air, necessary for me to continue to live. And even though it hurt sometimes, I never knew a greater achievement than being able to love.

I loved her with every fiber of my being. It was the kind of love that burned through my veins. A painful kind of love, but I wouldn't have traded it in for the world. For in that love, I found the missing pieces of myself. She was able to complete me, to cure me.

I would have died for her, if she hadn't told me to do otherwise. She told me that if I died for her, she would always be burdened with guilt. There was nothing that I wanted more than her happiness. So I promised not to die for her. However, I knew that without her, I would be dead inside. She was my only reason for living, for going on.

Six years after she made me a butterfly, I lost her. I don't know who killed her, only that they did it on Voldemort's behalf. Because I betrayed him, he took her away from me. He took my air, yet I'm still breathing. Truthfully, I have decided that I do not want to know the name of her murderer, I don't need it. I only have enough space in my heart to love her completely. There is not enough room to hate.

September twenty-second of that year should have been the happiest day of my life. Instead, it became the saddest, the most burdened. I was to marry her that day. Instead, I watched silently as they took her from me and lowered her into the ground.

Over the next few years, I had thoughts of ending my own life. She had been the reason for my existence. Without her, I had no reason to stay on this Earth. No reason to live or be or breathe or go on every day without her. I never did end it all, though. She told me that she didn't want me dying because of her. It was those words that screamed and yelled through my mind, echoing, before I went to kill myself. It was those words that stopped me from taking my own life. Those words stilled the knife, held back the pills. Those words, her love, her passion.

Now, I am living for her. It's all I can do for her anymore. Days, weeks and months have passed by since she was ripped away from the people that needed her the most. I have lived almost sixty years since I lost her. Sixty lost years. Yesterday was my eighty-third birthday. Everyone is gone now, except for me. All of her brothers have gone. Ron. His children visit me often, they call me Uncle Draco. I believe that it's his way of apologizing for all the years of hatred between us. Hermione Granger was last to pass on, two months ago. Even the Boy Who Lived is dead. I cried at his funeral, cried the way I couldn't for hers, something I never imagined myself doing.

I am minutes away from death, and I'm fine with that. I have fulfilled my promise to live. Soon I will able to see Ginny and all the others. To smell her hair, to be with her. It's that thought that kept me and keeps me from depression. She saved me from an eternity of emptiness. Without her I would be in the same Hell as my father.

I am amazed by her, even though she's no longer with me. I can hear her calling to me; her voice faint. I know I'll soon get to be with her again. Her shining face and being take up the last of my thoughts. We will have all of eternity to make up for time lost.