Chapter Text
Hiraeth - a homesickness for a home you can’t return to, or that never was.
Draco Malfoy finished his Firewhisky, the gold-brown liquid burning down his throat, making him hiss. Sometimes, he wondered whether he would ever get used to the stinging sensation, the taste, the feeling of the alcohol coursing through his veins. He had never actually enjoyed any of that. Like so often in his life, he drank the revolting liquid because it was what people did, what his father did, not questioning whether the alternative might be preferable. This time, he did question it, but Draco had never been brave and tonight, he was in need of a little courage.
The manor around him was almost eerily quiet, something Draco either cherished or hated, depending on his mood, but ever since the battle, ever since Voldemort’s final defeat, it seemed that their house had been plunged into perpetual silence. He closed his eyes and tried to recall what it had sounded like before, but the truth was that it had never truly been alive, at least not in a pleasant way. Draco almost flinched at the memory of a slammed door, of his father’s shouting, the hushed but agitated voices of visiting Death Eaters, of his aunt’s maniacal laughter and the screams of her victims. If anything, Death had been in his house and its traces still lingered in every corner, in the expensive tapestries on the walls, in the heavy curtains and… in him. Draco decided that he hated the silence tonight.
He pulled down his left sleeve and extended his hand, about to pour himself another glass, when a sudden plop startled him and caused him to withdraw his hand from the bottle. Turning his head, Draco scanned his surroundings for the cause of the noisy interruption and he found that he room was spinning around him until his eyes settled on a child-sized, raggedy house-elf, made even smaller by the curve of his spine that had distorted into a deep bow. The elf’s nose almost touched the floor.
“Dibly apologises to young Master Malfoy for the disturbance,” the elf’s squeaky voice was almost inaudible as she spoke to the floor. When she finally ended her bow and straightened her back, Draco noticed the frightened look on her face.
It sent a wave of disgust through his body and he wasn’t sure whether it was because of the Firewhisky or Dibly’s timid appearance. He had rarely interacted with his parents’ new house-elf at all and yet, she seemed as terrified of him as she was of his father. The idea that he was the cause of sheer terror in a creature he had never even so much as asked for a cup of tea would have pleased him once, now it seemed revolting.
“Then why are you disturbing me?” Draco asked.
His tone was indifferent despite his annoyance and still, Dibly visibly shied away from him before she answered his question. “Young Master Malfoy’s mother asked Dibly to see that he is alright.”
Draco rolled his eyes and almost discarded his resolution to show nothing but indifference towards his family’s servant. For the last couple of weeks, his mother had hovered over him almost constantly with a look of perduring concern on her face, asking whether he was feeling alright, why he never went out to see his friends, whether he would like something to eat, why he always seemed to be retreating. If anything, her worry only caused Draco to pull back further, but he had hoped for a few days of peace when his parents announced that they would be visiting extended family in America. But even with an ocean between them, his mother managed to reach out.
Taking a deep breath, Draco gathered all of his willpower and even managed a faint smile towards the house-elf. “Tell my mother that I’m fine,” he said. It wasn’t true yet, but it would be. “Tell her to enjoy America and bring me something nice.”
Dibly’s wrinkly features lit up just a little before the elf Disapparated with another plop.
Draco leaned back, sighing and praying that he had managed to reassure his mother. The last thing he needed right now was for her to show up and ruin the plan he had so carefully made, knowing full well that she would disapprove if she knew. But Narcissa Malfoy wasn’t here and there was no one who could stop him from lifting the bottle of Firewhisky and taking one last sip. It was now or never.
The quiet of the house had ceased to bother him when he placed his arm on the table before him, black sleeves covering his skin up to the wrists. For a moment, Draco tried to remember the last time he had been able to glance at his left forearm without being consumed by rage and disgust and he realised that he hadn’t looked at it at all, always hiding the Mark beneath at least one layer of clothing. At first, it had been an attempt to keep himself safe from others. The sight of the Dark Mark had ceased to scared people after Voldemort’s downfall, instead, it made them angry. More than one reformed Death Eater had been attacked, killed even, and some had probably deserved it. Yet Draco had soon realised that hiding the Mark did not protect him, that his familiar features and white-blonde hair were enough to identify him as a Malfoy, so he had followed his father’s footsteps once again and stopped going out.
Yet none of it, neither the seclusion nor the fabric, had protected him from himself. Draco knew that the Dark Mark was still there. When once it had felt like a ticket to freedom and power, it now felt like a chain that was tying him to a life he was trying to leave behind, tying him to a past he would rather forget, tying him to the memories he wished he could erase from his mind. Ever-present. Inescapable. Draco Malfoy didn’t want to be this person any longer and there was only one way he could think of to move on. He needed to cut it out.
Before he could think better of it, before his own cowardice overpowered him, Draco pulled up his sleeve and reached for the knife, the sharpest knife he had found in the whole house. Closing his eyes and inhaling sharply, he brought it to his skin.
In and out of consciousness, Draco was aware of only pain. From his left arm, it spread upwards to his shoulder, his chest, coursing through his body in waves that knocked out his senses. Still, he felt like laughing. He had done it. He had beat it. Taken a knife and just cut it out. Draco was free at last.
When another wave of pain had subsided, Draco dared to open his eyes, only to find a strange, blurred sight. He hadn’t remembered the sitting room to be so bright. Was it morning already? Had he neglected to close the curtains? A strange thought occurred to him, hardly noticeable between in delight of victory. What if he wasn’t in the sitting room at all anymore? Madness. He just needed to go back to sleep before the next wave of agony hit, but no matter how long he waited, it wouldn’t come.
Instead, there was a faint, distant voice. Had the house-elf returned and found him? Oh, his mother would be furious. Whatever it was, Draco tried to drown it out and focus on the most important part. He had successfully severed himself from what had made him a Death Eater.
“Can you hear me?” an unfamiliar voice asked. Draco didn’t recognise it, he only knew it wasn’t Dibly.
“We need to act,” another voice said, a male one this time. “He’s losing too much blood. Do the spell.”
Draco forced his eyes open despite the brightness. He had definitely left the comfort of his sitting room and was instead staring at a plain white ceiling. Then, someone bent over him. For a moment, he had assumed that the woman would speak to him now that he was awake, but she seemed to search his face for something other than a sign of consciousness. For a strange reason, she seemed vaguely familiar. Then, Draco watched as she drew out her wand and directed it towards his arm. He recognised the effects of the spell immediately despite his befuddled state and moved to stop her, only to find that something had rendered him immobile.
“No!” he croaked, but the sound got stuck in his throat.
So Draco merely lay there, somewhere in a room at St. Mungo’s, watching helplessly as a healer undid the work that had taken him years to find the courage to accomplish and restored the skin of his arm with a single spell. Out of the corner of his eye, Draco saw his skin grow back together and patch itself up without as much as a scar, reassembling the Dark Mark in the process. Everything had been in vain.