Ruins

RUINS

Nowadays every single day was alike for her. It seemed like the routine was her lifeline and she certainly didn't feel like doing anything else. All she wanted was to sit in the rose garden or stare at the pond for hours each day. When the sun would start to lower itself, her mother-in-law would come to bring her inside and she would let her lead.

There were no more points of interest in her life. Everything that had been of any value to her was wiped out by that hideous war. She had been on the winning side, but there was no joy when there was no one to share it with.

Every day her thoughts were filled with tremendous amounts of guilt and pain. She knew she should have stood up for Harry or at least for her own family. Her own family. She should have defended them with all her might! If she hadn't held back all the information that she was able to access, there might have been a different outcome to all of this. Now she was the last of the Weasleys.

How could anything be so utterly unfair? Maybe this was revenge of all the injustice she had committed. Living this empty life, haunted with memories was her personal little hell. It certainly seemed like the cruellest punishment she could have imagined. Avada Kedavra was easy peace compared to the torment going on inside her head.

At first she had really tried to think about the baby. Even on the days when the thoughts hurt the most, she had tried to see her future with that innocent little one, who was not only part of her, but part of Draco too. Part of something that she had loved so much, that she had betrayed everything she was taught to believe in, every single friend she had had and even her own flesh and blood.

It had comforted her for a while to think of this baby as an extension of her love for Draco. Since she could no longer have him, she could still see the result of his love to her in their son or a daughter.

She used to think that maybe everything would have been tolerable; if Draco had survived. Now every sacrifice that she had made because of her fierce love had been in vain. He had died with her standing by his side, but he had died none the less.

Every single dawn it became clearer to her how the world was changing into a harder place to breathe. The world where Voldemort finally reined was not a place she wanted to be. Not anything that she would want her baby to be exposed to.

Lucius had taken her wand away from her once they understood what was going on with her mental state, saying that the Malfoy line had to continue. They would not let her hurt herself or the baby. She would carry it to full term, so that there would once again be an heir to someday take on Lucius's place.

She was almost sure; that there was not going to be a part for her reserved in the new heir's life. It was clear that she was not going to have a say in the care and upbringing of her child. She had gathered that from the conversations of Lucius and their 'house guests'.

They all seemed to think that she was so far into her own world; that their words would not reach to her. Well, actually they didn't seem to care about what she heard. She was like a prisoner in the manor. She had not left the place for months. There just was no place to go.

Even when the nightmares still haunted her every single night and reflections of them followed her to the next day, her dreams had changed little by little.

Her brothers and parents haunted her each night a little less. Harry's accusations echoed in her tortured mind just a little softer. Draco's lifeless form, however, never ceased to torment her. But the most livid horrors in her mind were now the ones in which she was giving birth to her beautiful baby, only to realise that the creature already bore the dark mark.