Six Months

Six Months


You've made your bed and you lie in it, entwined nightly in warm limbs and mumbled pledges. Then in the mornings you get up early, keeping to yourself the hour or so before he stumbles into the kitchen, sleepy and spectacle-less.

Not that you like mornings any better than Harry does, but you need the time alone. To learn to accommodate, to accept. And it's not actually the fact that people think you're incapable of mourning, or even that they think you shouldn't mourn that angers you. It's the fact that they seem to believe you should have expected it. Should have seen his death as inevitable.

But to you, it wasn't. It was a complete shock. When Severus told you, all you could say was, "No, this isn't happening, this isn't happening."

It's been half a year and yet it's only now you comprehend the fact he's really truly gone, that one of the pillars upholding your world has dissolved into ash and asphodel. And the thought's no longer a Bludger to the gut, it's a constant heavy stone, lying flat and dense at the bottom of your stomach.

You told Harry you forgave him, and it's true, you did. You have. You told him you forgave him because you love him, and that was the lie. You forgave him because he doesn't have a father - so he can't understand the whys and wherefores of your pain. That's the reason you forgave him.

But even with forgiveness, all Harry's tender caring can't pull you from this cold blanketing numbness you've sunken into, and which you admit only to yourself that you don't want to surrender. Because every now and then it slips, and you find yourself remembering. Not just the good, but the bad as well.

Summers at the beach when you were little, where he'd throw you shrieking with glee up into the air to splash down into the water. The way he'd cuff you hard around the ear if he thought you were being insolent. How he'd let you eat all but the first and last cherry liqueurs from the box you bought him for Yule every year. The scathing verbal attacks that would leave you fighting back tears. Magic lessons together, where he taught you to love the artistry and promise of magic, not just its power. The thrashings he gave you when you disobeyed him, or when he was angry and you just weren't invisible enough.

A hundred hundred little memories; the manner in which he held his walking stick, the sinister chuckle you swore he practised behind closed doors, the small vanity of always smoothing his long pale hair in front of the mirror before leaving the manor, the way he clasped you by the shoulder - part pride and part possession. All things you took for granted, reassuring habits that would be there forever, regardless of the spectre of exile or Azkaban or death. Just like you took it for granted, never doubted, that he still loved you, despite his rage and disappointment over your choices - of partner, of career, of side in the war. You never doubted. So when the numbness slips, it hurts, it hurts so much and you just want him back. You want him back.

Harry comes into the kitchen, dressed, but yawning and semi-conscious. He absently drops a kiss on the top of your head as you stare down into your mug, then moves to the counter to fix himself tea and toast with the Muggle apparatus he insisted on buying. He's halfway through eating when there's the whoosh of the Floo from the living room, followed by Weasley walking through the dining room doorway.

"Morning all," he says, much too cheerily for this hour of the morning. "Thought you'd be ready by now, Harry."

Harry grunts a greeting through a mouthful of toast. You ignore them both to divine the mysteries of the universe in the inkiness of your cold coffee.

"He still moping?" Ron asks with a distinct lack of sympathy.

You look up and for the first time in months glare at him, feeling a more than slight desire to curse him into something small, hairy and arachnid.

You never thought you'd envy the Weasel anything, but now you do. Envy and resent. When he thinks of Lucius Malfoy at all, Weasley thinks of the man who followed the Dark Lord to the death, who callously murdered Muggles and Wizards, publicly humiliated his over-abundant family and almost killed his sister. And you can't deny that's who Lucius Malfoy was, or the fact you rejected that man. But you aren't mourning the death of Lucius Malfoy - you're mourning the death of your father.

"Ron." Harry sighs, then stands, clasping a triangle of toast in his hand. "You go ahead, I'll just grab my coat."

Whatever he's saying wordlessly to the Weasel obviously gets through the firewall for once, as Weasley clumps off to the living room.

Harry sticks the wedge of toast between his teeth, unhooks his coat from the back of the door and puts it on, struggling with inside-out arms. By the time he's finished and retrieving the toast, he's flushed, mussed and crumby. Amusement curls the corners of your mouth. He grins, then comes to kiss you goodbye. As you tilt your head up he sobers.

"Sure you don't want to come? Snape won't mind you having a day off."

The concern on his face is balm on areas still too scraped and raw. You lean forward, kiss him like he's swans' down, like he's candy-floss, then sit back, licking crumbs and butter and Harry into your mouth.

"I'm sure," you finally say. "Giving teenage girls something to giggle over is more your forte."

He slides a hand through long hair you haven't cut since...since quite a while.

"Draco? I'm worried about you. It's been six months..." he trails off.

Has it really been that long?

"I'll be fine, Harry. I'm a Malfoy, remember? It takes more than a couple of knocks to bring us down."

Which was a bad thing to say. He now looks miserable.

"I'll be fine, Potter. Honestly!" exasperation creeps into your voice. "Look, if it makes you feel any better, I almost hexed the Weasel just then."

Of all the things in the world to make him smile, that has to be the oddest.

"Good."

"Really? Does this mean I can h..."

"Harry!" Weasley yells from the living room. "Come on!"

"The unwashed masses await you."

You give a half-hearted sneer. Harry kisses you firmly on the mouth; as much demand as farewell.

"I'll see you at dinner."

"I'll have your slippers waiting for you, dear."

And then he's gone.

You go upstairs to get ready for your day and the cold numbness seeps back in. But the stone, it feels a few grams lighter now.

--end--