Be Careful
82: How You Mourn
By Anne B. Walsh
Marcus Black awakened with a sour taste in his mouth, his sheets knotted around his legs, and his pajama shirt damp with sweat. Unwinding himself and sliding out of bed silently, so as not to wake his dormmates, he reviewed his options. Either he’d had a nightmare (but he would have remembered one bad enough to do this), he was coming down with something (though his sister would surely have noticed the night before), or...
He shut his eyes and laid a hand against the stone wall of his dormitory, letting his Ravenclaw abilities seek out the source of the wrongness. Within seconds he had his answer.
It’s bad, worse than I’ve come across before, even in hospital. His father had taken him to St. Mungo’s on several occasions, both to learn what different types of need felt like to his special sensitivity and to teach him to block what he couldn’t help. And it’s close, very close. Here, in the dorm.
He concentrated harder, narrowing down his focus. Boys’ side. Older students. Seventh years...
The personality "scent" of his target seeped into Marcus’ nose, and he broke the contact with Hogwarts immediately. Snatching up his dressing gown and shoving his feet into slippers, he bolted out through the common room and up the nearest stairs, headed for a particular set of quarters.
Some things a bloke could handle by himself. For others, he needed parents.
Draco lay in a tight ball under his pillow, his long gray form doubled back on itself and his nose shoved against his own side. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been there, or if he’d ever fallen asleep. Knowing that would have required too much thinking.
For the first time since his successful completion of Animagus back in January, he was truly appreciative of the change in outlook that his animal form allowed. His pain, his grief, his guilt, all seemed one step removed when he wore fur and four legs. They still crowded around him, threatened to overwhelm him, but he could take refuge in the simple comforts of his mongoose mind. He was hidden here, warm and dry, with no predators threatening him.
None except the ones I make myself.
Perhaps, he thought drowsily, he would stay in this form forever. It didn’t matter if he forgot his human mind—what good had a human mind ever done him, or anyone else around him?
None. I just hurt people and get them killed, good people who didn’t deserve it. But as long as I stay an animal, all my friends will be animals too, and that doesn’t have to happen anymore...
A whoosh of cloth alerted him that someone had opened his bedcurtains. He curled up tighter. Go away, he willed whoever it was. If you’re human, go away. I’m not a good person to know.
Someone lifted the pillow away from him. Draco whipped his head around, ready to snarl and bite, then stopped in surprise.
The form looming above him was definitely not human.
Before he could figure out what it was, it had dropped the pillow on the middle of the bed and clamped its jaws around him instead. He squealed and started to struggle, but a warning rumble came from his captor’s chest, and sharp teeth dug into his side. I don’t want to hurt you, she seemed to be saying. Hold still.
Draco went limp, concentrating instead on figuring out who this was. Female, the creature now carrying him out of the dorm was female, he’d got that without having to think about it—sharp teeth meant a predatory form, and that growl had sounded canine—
The female wolf trotted through the door of a small room and dropped Draco onto a mattress on the floor near the far wall. Glancing back to be sure he was watching, she returned to the door, pulled it shut with her teeth, and waggled the handle with a paw.
She wants me to know it’s not locked. It’s there to keep other people out, not to keep me in. I can leave any time I want.
I should leave now. I shouldn’t stay here, not when I put everyone I care about in danger.
Blunt claws clicked against floorstones, accompanied by a sweet milky smell, and the wolf’s brown-furred muzzle nudged Draco farther back on the mattress, giving her room to climb up beside him.
But considering she already is Danger, I think maybe this once I can stick around.
It was a stupid argument and he knew it. He should have been out that door already, finding a way off the grounds and up into the mountains, getting himself away from people who might be hurt by his presence. Instead he was here, letting Danger curl up around him protectively, even resting his nose on her paw. She licked the back of his neck once, then sighed and laid her head down beside him.
It’s only polite not to leave while she’s awake, Draco told himself. I’ll wait until she falls asleep. She shouldn’t take too long about it, it must be pretty early still, and Jenny’s not sleeping through the night yet. I can wait a few minutes.
Just a few minutes.
That’s all.
At Remus’ nod, Cecilia pulled the door open. Draco was fast asleep against Danger, his sleek pearl-gray fur a startling contrast to her curling brown. Cecy knelt and laid her fingers on her son’s side, invoking again the power she had used at Christmas to bypass his dream state and keep him from making transit inadvertently. For this one day, no matter how often or how deeply he slept, Draco would waken to this world.
I wish I could be with him, but judging by what Luna has been able to tell Starwing and what Severus has told me, my presence would only hurt him more. I must trust others with his care for today, and spend my time elsewhere.
Kissing the fingertips of her other hand, she brushed them against Draco’s ear, making it quiver. I love you, my darling, and when you are ready to hear it, I will tell it to you, as many times as you need to hear it to believe. Until I see you again, be well.
She stood up and left the room, bound for the main floor and the room behind the Great Hall. No one else would be there so early, or if they were they would respect her desire for solitude. There she could pay her silent respects to a woman whom, but for the grace of God, she might have been.
Though I think and hope that she would consider the greatest gift possible to be my continued care of the son for whom she died...
Hunger woke Draco a second time. He was human again, and Danger was gone. Moony sat at a desk across the room, manipulating figurines about the size of chess pieces with his wand, though he turned in his chair at Draco’s first movement. "Good morning," he said. "Though it’s nearly good afternoon. How do you feel?"
Draco shrugged, rolling onto one elbow and shoving himself upright. "Not sure."
"We know the basic facts of what happened last night, your time." Moony might have been laying out a lesson Draco had missed in class for all the emotion in his voice. "If you care to talk about it, that’s fine."
"Talk about what?" Draco’s fingernails cut into his palms as he closed his hands into fists. "Talk about the way I killed my own mother? My real mother, not just someone who looks like her and spins smooth little stories about love and loneliness?"
"Be careful of taking too much on yourself." Moony picked up one of the figurines, now motionless, and twirled it between his fingers. "Your actions played a part in what happened, but I would hardly say from what I know that you killed your mother."
Draco jumped to his feet. "If I hadn’t done what I did, she’d still be alive!" he shouted. His hands ached with the need to lash out, to spread his pain. "If I hadn’t betrayed her and everything she taught me!"
"She taught you to care for others," said Moony, setting down the figurine with a small thump. "Or if she didn’t, she would have wanted to."
"How do you know? You never knew her! None of you did!" Draco’s throat hurt from the force of his words, but they would not be denied. "And now no one will ever know her again, because of me! I’m not stupid, I know what was going on! There was a deal, something about her or me, and she picked herself, and she never should have, because I’m not worth it! Not to her, not with what she thought was right! She’d have been ashamed of me if she knew what I was doing every night, do you understand that? She’d bloody well have disowned me!"
"I think you’re wrong."
The calm tone only infuriated Draco more. "You think I’m wrong? Well, I think I’m right! She would never have agreed with any of what goes on here, never, and neither should I—"
He stopped short, understanding coming at last. "You made me do this," he said, the heat in his chest compressing momentarily into a block of ice. "You did something to me. You played with my mind, messed me around. This is all some big fancy trick, isn’t it, Lupin? That’s all it’s ever been!"
The older wizard, Lupin as he must be, rose and stood motionless beside the desk as Draco strode across the room. "You’re laughing up your sleeve because you got me to do all your dirty work for you," he snarled at his former professor, "got me to care about Mudbloods and monsters like you and give up everything I ever wanted for a fast line and a pretty face, and now it’s my mother who’s dead but all your precious people are just fine!"
He hurled a punch at Lupin’s face. The werewolf dodged adeptly and made a swipe of his own, and an instant later Draco found himself pinioned, wrapped in Lupin’s arms with his back to the older man’s front. He struggled furiously, but his hands were trapped against his sides.
"Not all my ‘precious people’ are ‘just fine’ right now," Lupin said quietly in his ear. "One in particular is very upset."
"Let go of me, werewolf!"
"As you like."
Lupin released him, and Draco dashed into the center of the room, shaking. "I am nothing to you," he snapped towards the far wall, surreptitiously feeling for his wand—yes, there it was, still safe in his pocket. "I never will be."
"If you say so." Lupin’s footsteps sounded, and Draco turned just enough to see that the werewolf had planted himself in front of the room’s only door. "But as I was saying, one person I regard as very precious is angry and grieving today, and I want to help him. If he thinks dueling with me would help him, then I’m at his disposal. I can’t let him hurt me or leave here with the intent to hurt other people, but anything else is fair game."
You can’t let me? Draco sneered to himself and reached for his wand. Try and stop me, old man. For all the kinds of fool you and your friends have been making me look this year, you’ve done me one great favor. You’ve trained me. I’m faster than I’ve ever been, stronger too. I’ll have you on your knees to me before I’m finished, asking my pardon for everything you’ve put me through...
His fingers closed just short of his wand’s hilt as words rang silently in his mind.
"Please, my lord, please... I’m sorry, I did my best, please..."
The voice was his own, terrified, pleading, hopeless, and with it came the flashing image of the moment he had spoken those words. He knelt at the feet of a real monster, his mind exposed under the gaze of its pitiless red eyes, begging that his life not end tonight, that he be spared another day, another hour.
Mother didn’t beg. She didn’t say anything. She went towards death, not away from it.
For me. She did that for me.
How can anyone be that strong? What let her do that?
"She knew about Luna," Lupin said into the silence.
Draco whipped around, glaring. "What?"
"Your mother." The older wizard’s voice hadn’t lost its calm edge; it was as imperturbable as a frozen lake. "She heard you one night, the two of you, singing and talking. Your Silencing Charms must have been sloppy."
Silencing Charms. As in a dream, Draco recalled the moment. I was in such a hurry to hear Luna sing again, I didn’t bother weaving the edges on the wall and ceiling charms... everyone was asleep anyway, I thought, and the bedrooms are miles from the music room...
"She came downstairs to listen, and stayed for quite a while." A slight, fond smile touched Lupin’s lips. "You and Luna were in no hurry to go to bed, and while she could hear you planning out your future together, neither was she."
Our future. Draco brought his hands up to eye level and stared at them. The future I wanted to have. How could I have thought it wasn’t real? And I was ready to attack someone who’s never been anything but good to me, someone who called me his own when I’d just called him a monster and tried to hurt him—
"What have I done?" he whispered.
"Nothing." Lupin—no, Moony—crossed the room in three strides and caught Draco just as his legs stopped working, easing him down onto the mattress in the corner again. "Given yourself a sore throat for tomorrow, that’s all."
"But what I said—"
"Was not you talking," Moony interrupted smoothly. "Grief and anger weaken us, they let out the darkness that lives in us all." He looked Draco straight in the eye, with never a hint of humor in his expression or his voice. "Will you let me be your strength for today?"
Draco’s voice failed him, but he didn’t need words, he was already across the space between them and clinging tight before his last resolve failed and his tears came. Strong arms held him close, a man’s voice murmured comfort, and he knew what it was to have a father, before he stopped knowing anything besides his pain.
"I didn’t deserve it," he remembered sobbing out, shaking with the knowledge of how his life had been ransomed. "I’m not worth that."
"No one is," Moony answered him gently. "No one ever is. All we can do is try to be, and keep trying even when we fail."
The honesty brought some measure of consolation in its wake, and Draco found himself bereft of tears and his eyes closing sooner than he had thought possible. When he awakened again, Abby was nestled against him, sound asleep with her arms around his waist. Danger and Moony sat across the room, talking in low voices and eating a simple meal, and the tray on the desk held two extra place settings.
It was three o’clock in the afternoon, and Draco Malfoy was safely home.
It was one o’clock in the morning, and Anne Walsh was safely through the roughest chapter in the story... I think I shall go and have a snack now, and try to stop shaking. Reviews are, as always, welcome.