'Then I?m telling it wrong,' said Hermione positively. 'It was quite horrible. And Harry thought you were dead and made a spectacle of himself.'
'I did not,' protested Harry, but he didn?t look particularly bothered. He craned his neck around. 'Wheres Sirius?'
Hermione got to her feet. 'I?ll get him. He was talking to Ben about what to do about the army.' She smiled down at Draco. 'Ron told him you killed a Dementor, so he wants to hear all about it.'
Draco nodded, just about too exhausted to speak. It wasn?t a bad exhaustion, however. Even though it was a cool night, and he was sitting on wet grass, and his body felt like a giant bruise, he nevertheless felt his eyelids drooping, as if he were sinking back into the blissful comfort of the first real sleep he could remember having had in weeks.
Malfoy. Harrys voice spoke in Dracos head. Draco was grateful that he didn?t have to open his eyes or move to respond. I thought it was time to give you this back.
Now Draco did open his eyes, and saw Harry holding something out to him that glittered bright as sunlight in his hand. The Epicyclical Charm.
He shook his head faintly. I don?t want it.
Harry looked surprised. But its your life.
I know. Draco leaned his head back against the tree trunk. I don?t want the responsibility for my life. Not right now. Hold onto it for a little while.
All right. Harry looped it back around his throat, looking somber.
Not unhappy, though. Thanks, then.
Draco shut his eyes again. The exhaustion was folding in around him like a blanket. He vaguely heard other people arriving, sitting down around him in a circle in the grass — heard Sirius? voice, heard Harry greet Ron (awake again) happily, heard Lupin speak to Fleur in French, heard Hermiones laugh, and then Ginnys soft voice in response. There was a soft touch on his arm; he heard Lupin ask how he was doing, and Harry said that he was fine, just tired, and they should let him sleep; he heard Sirius say that the Ministry was on their way; he heard Ginny announce, some sadness in her voice, that Ben had gone, and his army had gone back with him. The voices became fainter and fainter, like music heard from another room, and then one last voice bent close and whispered in his ear.
'Draco.' It was Ginny. Her voice was barely a murmur. 'Theres one thing you should see before you fall asleep.' She leaned over, and he felt her hand on his left arm, pulling up his sleeve with great gentleness. He half-opened his eyes and looked down, and it was a moment before he realized that what he was looking at was not an object she wanted him to see so much as the lack of an object — on the fair inner skin of his forearm, which had born the skull-and-serpent sign of the Snake Lord, there was no longer any mark.
References: The Pattern that gives Daco flashes of memory and represents his life is inspired by the Pattern in the Chronicles of Amber series by Roger Zelazny. Oggrings and skolks are from Tanith Lee's White Horse, Black Castle.
On the evening before Harry Potters seventeenth birthday, not two weeks after his last glimpse of Salazar Slytherin, Draco left the Manor, where Harry, Hermione, Sirius and Narcissa were playing Exploding Snap by the fireplace, and went and sat on the hill overlooking the house where they had buried what remained of his father. The night was beyond clear, as if someone has stretched a sheet of glass across the sky, through which the starlight shimmered with a diamond brilliance. It had rained that day and all around him the grass was wet, each blade glittering like a nail driven into the ground. Above him rose the mausoleum erected to the memory of his father. It was hewn black onyx and its unreflective surface seemed to draw in the darkness of the night.
He wasn?t sure what he had hoped to accomplish by sitting here all night; whether he was saying goodbye, or had hoped to have some communication with his fathers ghost, and what he would say to that ghost if it appeared. Nobody had tried to stop him from going; they were all being so careful around him these days, as if he were something terribly fragile that might break. Not that all of them who were at the Manor now — himself and Harry, Hermione and Ginny and Ron, Sirius and Lupin and his own mother — hadn?t been through the same nightmare, but he had been its focal point. The darkness had touched them all, but only Draco had nearly been swallowed up by it, had been inside it, had been the darkness. The Dark Mark was gone from his arm, but the memory of everything that had happened still burned against the back of his eyes. There was still so much to be sorted through, to be understood, to be forgiven and to try to forget. He found himself restless, wandering the dark halls of the Manor at night, startling his own reflection in mirrors, looking for answers and finding none.
Harrys birthday was tomorrow, and there would be a party, and he did not want to go. Sirius had wanted to make it a joint birthday party for the two of them, but Draco had refused. He didn?t want a party. So there had been a quiet dinner for him the week before, and he?d been given presents, which initially he didn?t want either.
New dress robes from his mother, a black leather FiloParch from Hermione, and Ginny had given him a book. Charlie Weasley had sent him a glass figurine of a dragon that spit Undestructive Flames at the top of every hour. And Sirius had given him a sword to replace the one the demons had taken back — it wasn?t a Living Blade, of course, but then nothing really was. Harry had rather unexpectedly given him a scabbard to go along with it, which was enchanted with a protective spell that kept the wearer from bleeding when wounded. He supposed Harry felt that he had seen enough blood, his own and others?, to last a lifetime.
Draco rose to his feet and looked down at the Manor, gray in the dim light. Familiar. The enormous terrace running all around the tall square stone house with its mansard roof. At each corner they small round towers with tall narrow windows in them. Good for Banishing hot oil onto advancing enemies. Shadows moved behind them