Work Text:
Je fais ce que je peux.
Which is to say, midwinter
and poems are as difficult as flowers.
Roots are secrets, my heart
mulch-heavy—a flowering shrub
under leaves and leaves,
rotting beech and oak.
I do what I can, which is to say,
there is little going on aboveground.
—Sylvia Legris, Darling
Aunt Bella birthed the child, but that was the last time she did anything one might consider motherly.
“I’ve always hated babies,” she said, lying in bed, gazing over at the cot with her heavy-lidded black eyes. “We get along so much better now that you’re older, don’t you think, Draco darling?”
Draco couldn’t have said whether that was true or not—though he suspected it was. He’d been sixteen months old when she’d been put away in Azkaban. “Yes, Auntie,” he said anyway. “Mother and I shall care for her.”
“I know you will,” she said, smiling her mad smile. She coaxed him closer and kissed his cheek, bony fingers digging into his shoulders hard enough to bruise. He could smell the blood and sweat from the birth still clinging to her skin. “Cissy’s always adored children.”
When he was finally free of her embrace, he went back to the cot, gazing down at his cousin. She was smaller than he’d ever imagined was possible, bright pink with wispy brown hair. She’d been swaddled in a cashmere blanket, a beanie on her head that’d once been Draco’s.
“Delphini,” he said, trying out the name. “Delphi.”
Behind him, Aunt Bella was muttering about her planned return to service of the Dark Lord, voice increasing in tempo and volume as she grew more excited. Draco let her voice wash over him without processing the words, enthralled by his tiny new cousin.
“You’re going to be the happiest baby on earth,” he murmured, smiling down at her.
In that moment, he almost believed himself.
*
Mother died at what would later be called the Final Battle.
Potter did too, the last of Wizarding Britain’s resistance crumbling with him, but none of that mattered to Draco.
Father is alive, he thought, attempting to force some sort of relief through the numb horror. But he took one look at Father’s face, at his empty, grief-stricken eyes, and knew that could no longer rely on him to be the strong one.
“Let’s go,” Draco said softly, putting a hand on Father’s shoulder. He was collapsed on his knees by Mother’s corpse.
Draco didn’t know who had killed her—whether it’d been a teacher, an Order member, a Death Eater. All he knew was that she was gone, that no matter what happened next, his life would never return to what it had been.
The Hogwarts wards had fallen, so together they apparated Mother’s body back to the Manor. There was no one else there but the elves and prisoners—and both groups knew to stay silent.
The crypt was behind the Manor, down a thin, pebbled path shaded by ferns. Father carried her cradled in his arms, her head resting against his collarbone, her arm hanging limp at her side.
Draco led the way, fumbling through the spells to unlock the stone door. The last time he’d visited the crypt, he’d been ten and Father had buried Grandfather Abraxas.
Father placed Mother on the stone table in the centre of the room, then stood there, unmoving, staring down at her.
“Father, we’ve got to start the ritual,” Draco said. He clutched his wand tighter, trying to stop the trembling in his hands. He’d stolen it from a dead student back at the castle and didn’t know whose it was—had been too cowardly to look at her face.
“No,” Father said, voice coming out thin and raspy. “No, you can’t—Narcissa, please—” And then he was crying, great heaving sobs like nothing Draco had ever seen from him before, even in the darkest days after Azkaban.
Draco watched, numb. The shaking in his hands ceased. He took a breath, then another, and raised his wand. “I’ll start the ritual now,” he said. Father didn’t react, but that was alright. He could do the spell on his own.
*
Later, Draco went back outside and stood, face turned upward toward the night sky. He couldn’t have said what time it was. The moon hung high, a gentle breeze carrying the sweet scent of spring up from the forest.
Mother was buried in the Malfoy crypt.
Father came out after him. He looked a mess, eyes rubbed raw, hair lank and filthy. He clutched at his forearm. “We need to go back,” he said. “The Dark Lord has summoned us.”
“I haven’t felt anything,” Draco said, pulling up his sleeve to expose his own arm to the moonlight. His Dark Mark was still red, while Father’s had turned an inky black.
Father was silent for a long moment. “Then he wishes to see me in particular.”
Draco swallowed. “Father—”
Father shook his head. He reached out and squeezed Draco’s shoulder, took the signet ring from his hand and slid it onto Draco’s finger. “I love you,” he said, “and I am proud of you.” Then he stepped back, and with a crack he was gone. Back to Hogwarts.
Back to the Dark Lord.
*
For the first hour, Draco stayed in the gardens, sitting on the steps of the crypt. It’d been so long since the Manor had been quiet. Usually there were werewolves outside, drunk and rowdy, breaking things, chasing Muggles through the forest for sport.
Later, when Father and the others still did not return, he picked himself up and headed for the Manor.
The silence was eery. It felt as if every shadow could’ve been hiding someone—Dolohov, Greyback, MacNair—yet Draco didn’t dare light the torches. He feared they would be a beacon, attracting anyone still in the house.
He went to the East Wing—the family wing—with no plan in mind except a childish desire to crawl into his parents’ bed and hide under the blankets, as if that could stave off reality as well as it had soothed his nightmares so long ago.
It was in the East Wing, passing down a hallway on the third floor, that Draco heard it: the weak, warbling cry of an infant.
He stopped dead in his tracks, clarity slicing through the fog that’d clung to his mind for hours.
“Merlin,” he choked out, turning toward the sound. “Delphi.”
And there she was, alone and forgotten in her nursery, a mobile made of clouds and moons floating dreamily above her head. When she saw Draco, her cries stopped and she let out a delighted gurgle, reaching for him with tiny hands.
“Delphi,” he repeated, picking her up and holding her to his chest, as gently as if she were made of paper. “How long have you been here alone?” He hadn’t seen her since the winter holidays and she’d grown so much he could scarcely believe it.
Aunt Bella was dead too, felled by a Weasley. Draco had seen it from afar but hadn’t had the chance to process her death till now. He sat heavily on the armchair by the window, Delphi curled up with her head beneath his chin.
“We’ve both lost our mothers today,” he said, voice coming out thin and tired. He kissed the top of her head. “And our aunts.”
Delphi made a sleepy sound, burrowing in against him. The pain and horror of the night seemed further away with her so close.
“I’ll look after you,” he said, not raising his voice above a whisper. “We’re the last of the Blacks.”
On his chest, Delphi had fallen asleep.
*
Over the next month, Draco did not even think of leaving the nursery. The elves delivered groceries and taught him how to feed, bathe and burp the baby. He wouldn’t let them touch her nor cook his food, taking on even the responsibility of changing her nappies.
“Stock the pantry and take the laundry, but otherwise leave us be,” he said, ignoring their pleas.
He could hear the Death Eaters whenever they were outside, their jeering voices audible even from the third floor with the windows shut. There was much yelling and laughter, the sky exploding with the light of cursefire.
Delphi loved the lights, giggling and clapping as the clouds lit up green from the Killing Curse or red from the Cruciatus. But she hated the screams that followed. Draco tried to cast silencing spells, yet they never seemed to stick. His magic no longer obeyed him as it was meant to, and he wasn’t sure if his stolen wand was to blame, or if the fault lay with him.
Often, he heard heavy footsteps down the hallway outside the nursery. Loud, male voices; the scraping of furniture being dragged over floorboards; glass shattering; portraits shrieking.
On those days, he stood defensively over Delphi’s cot, not daring to pick her up and disturb her sleep. He didn’t know what would happen if they were overheard. If someone finally remembered them.
There weren’t many people left who knew about Delphi. Mother and Aunt Bella were dead. Uncle Rodolphus and the Dark Lord both knew but had never shown any interest in her. And Father… Father knew too.
The more time that passed, the more his hope faded, yet still, Draco dreamed of Father returning. They’d go to their house in France and hide with Delphi till the Dark Lord was less angry, After that, he’d be grateful to them for caring for his daughter. Surely.
Every facet of the dream was a foolish fantasy, but it sustained Draco, nevertheless. Some nights, he convinced himself so thoroughly of Father’s return that when he woke, he was confused to still be at the Manor.
The Malfoy signet ring weighed heavy on his finger.
*
When the nursery had been Draco’s rooms, before he moved to the Heir’s Suite at eleven, the walls had been sky blue. They were now a cheery daisy yellow. Sometimes, Draco sat on the floor, resting his head against the wall. Mother had picked the colour and supervised the painting. Somehow it made him feel closer to her.
There were two main rooms—the bedroom and a sun-bathed playroom. The Manor created a space between both rooms to fit a human-height kitchenette so that he could cook for the both of them. An ensuite was attached, with a full-sized tub for a Draco and a tiny baby tub for Delphi.
As Delphi had no need of the playroom yet, the Manor transformed it into a room for Draco. It filled shelves with books from the library, repurposed a desk from his late aunt Hisperia’s rooms, and placed a bed beneath the window, the duvet glittering Slytherin green.
Draco became deeply uncomfortable when away from Delphi for long and preferred to sleep on the rug by her cot with his duvet and pillow. Eventually, despite its obvious reluctance, the Manor moved his bed into her room.
When he wasn’t caring for her, Draco would sit in the armchair by the window and try to read. Yet the words seemed to blur on the page, and he often found himself forgetting what he’d just read. Instead, he’d sit for hours staring into the barren fireplace or out the window at the high blue skies till the sun set and it grew dark and cold. Or until Delphi called for him.
*
He caught snatches of the conversation of the men in the hallway sometimes, though usually it was muffled. On more than one occasion, he heard them rush off, muttering among each other about summons from the Dark Lord.
“My fucking arm feels like it’s going to burn off,” one groaned.
Draco frowned down at his own Dark Mark, but it stayed red and painless. “Perhaps it’s broken,” he said with much scepticism.
*
The next morning, Draco had his answer.
He woke to Delphi’s excited babbling, an unusual sound when there was nothing to entertain her. The room was lit by the thin grey of the approaching dawn. Draco sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. Something was wrong, a sharp chill in the air as if he’d left a window open by mistake. He turned toward the window and froze, breath choking up in his chest.
The Dark Lord was standing over Delphi’s cot.
As if sensing Draco’s panic, he turned then to look directly at him, eyes gleaming a bloody crimson in the gloom.
“I see you’ve finally decided to join us,” he said with cruel amusement. “It has been a long time since we last spoke, Draco.”
In the past, Draco would’ve scrambled out of bed already. He would’ve thrown himself at the Dark Lord’s feet, babbling apologies, pleading for mercy. But now he couldn’t seem to muster any of that fear, any of that desperate desire not to be hurt. To stay alive.
He sat there, hands resting on his blanket-covered thighs, watching the Dark Lord. It didn’t seem that he intended to hurt Delphi.
“My lord,” he said eventually, realising that he was expected to respond. He lapsed back into silence, unable to think of anything else to say. It felt as though it had been years since he’d turned his mind to anything other than Delphi’s care.
“I’ve known you were here from the start, Draco,” the Dark Lord said. “No one else has thought to ask after you.”
Only two years earlier, Draco would’ve found that inconceivable. But things change.
He got out of bed and put on his dressing gown, belting it tight around his waist. “She needs to be fed,” he said, going to the cabinet beside the cot. He could sense the Dark Lord’s eyes on him, burning into the back of his neck.
The milk was brought daily by the elves and kept under a stasis for freshness. He took it to the kitchenette and heated the milk in a saucepan. Once he’d tested it on the inside of his wrist, he poured it into her bottle, returning to the bedroom.
“Excuse me,” he said, waiting expectantly for the Dark Lord to move.
The Dark Lord gazed down at him, expression unreadable. Then he stepped away, allowing Draco access to the cot.
“Thank you,” Draco said, barely glancing at him. He picked Delphi up, shooshing her fussing. “I know,” he murmured when she waved a cranky little hand at him. “I’ve got your bottle right here.”
She settled once she began to feed, looking up at him with her big brown eyes. They weren’t Aunt Bella’s eyes, he thought distantly. Nor those of any Blacks he knew.
Once she’d finished, he held her over one shoulder and rubbed her back till she burped up a little puddle of fluid. Then he set her back down in her cot and aimed a cleaning spell at his dressing gown. It took three attempts to produce a satisfying one, his usual poor performance made worse by the Dark Lord’s attention.
“Having trouble with your wand?”
“It isn’t my wand,” Draco said, frowning down at it. “I took it at—” He broke off and went silent.
“Perhaps this will be preferable,” the Dark Lord said. He took a wand from his sleeve and presented it to Draco. It was hawthorn, sleek and subdued, instantly recognisable.
“That’s my wand,” Draco said stupidly. He reached out and took it, not even remembering to ask the Dark Lord’s permission.
The Dark Lord relinquished it easily.
Draco was afraid it would have abandoned him after Potter’s theft, but the surge of familiar, friendly magic was unmistakable. The curtains fluttered and the mobile above Delphi’s cot spun, tinkling softly.
“Thank you,” he said.
The Dark Lord’s crimson eyes slid across Draco’s features like oil through water, as if he was searching for something. Some kind of answer. “You buried your mother in the Malfoy crypt,” he said.
“Yes,” Draco replied.
“Then perhaps you should like to do the same for your father.” There was a slight curl to his thin lips, cruel amusement budding, waiting for Draco’s reaction.
Draco waited for the rush of despair, the horror, the desolation, but it never came. All along, he’d known his father was dead. He twisted the signet ring on his pinky finger. It was still loose. He’d been holding off on adjusting it to size.
He bent over the cot and kissed Delphi on the forehead. “I’ll be back soon,” he murmured. It was the first time he’d left her since returning to the Manor.
“Okay,” Draco said, straightening up and meeting the Dark Lord’s gaze evenly. “Will you show me where his body is?”
*
The Dark Lord led him down to the ground floor and through long, familiar hallways to the back of the Manor. It was still early and they met few Death Eaters on the way, but those who saw them could not hide their incredulity when they laid eyes on Draco.
They must have thought he’d died or fled. Instead, he trailed after the Dark Lord unrestrained, clothed in his dressing gown and slippers as if nothing had changed in the Manor since he’d been a child. As if it was still his home.
Father was in the dungeons, on the level where the bodies were dumped once the Death Eaters and werewolves were done with them. He was barely recognisable, his hair that he’d once taken so much pride in filthy and matted, torn in huge bloody clumps from his head.
Father’s eyes were open and glassy, expression twisted in a rictus of agony. His hands, now stiff and cold, were twisted like claws, nails torn away and fingertips bloody. Tears had cleared thin, pale tracks through the grime on his face.
Draco knelt beside him, heedless of the filth soaking into his fluffy dressing gown. He took one of Father’s bloody, stiff hands between his own and held it. “It’s okay, Father,” he said. “I’m here now.”
“He’s dead,” the Dark Lord said. “He can’t hear you.”
“Shhh,” Draco said gently, as if he was speaking to Delphi, not the Dark Lord. “Father is resting.”
*
He took Father to the crypt and laid him to rest beside Mother.
“I’m sorry I didn’t visit sooner,” he said, running his fingers over the letters of Mother’s name on the marble lid of her coffin. “I’ve been so busy looking after Delphi that I’ve not had the chance to get away.” He didn’t really feel guilty. Mother would understand, of course. She’d been caring for Delphi while he was away at school.
The Dark Lord had followed him into the crypt and was standing by the coffin of Draco’s grandfather, reading the inscription. Though it was a sacred place meant for family only, Draco couldn’t muster the anger he knew he was meant to feel. He watched the Dark Lord with a strange sort of detachment, as if it were the crypt of another family that he was trespassing into—another family, another life, another time.
“I’m finished,” Draco said. “I need to go make sure Delphi’s settled down after her feed.”
“Is that so?” the Dark Lord said.
“Yes,” Draco said, not looking at him, too distracted by the cleaning spells he needed to cast on his dressing gown. “Please excuse me.”
The Dark Lord followed him back to the Manor but left him at the foot of the stairs. Alone, Draco went back through the hallways and up the stairs till he was back at Delphi’s rooms.
She was awake and crying plaintively.
“Sorry, sorry,” Draco said. He went to the bathroom first to clean his hands and put his dressing gown in the laundry basket, then came back out, cradling her to his chest and rocking her gently. “I’m back, Delphi.”
*
After that first morning, the Dark Lord no longer stayed away. He came intermittently—perhaps two to three times a month, though Draco didn’t keep track, days and weeks slipping by with him scarcely noticing.
Usually, the Dark Lord stood by the door, watching Draco play with Delphi, heat her milk on the stove, cook dinner. He rarely spoke, rarely moved from the doorway, always watching them with his unreadable red eyes.
Once, Draco had started awake in the middle of the night and come into the study to find him perusing the bookshelves, face shrouded in shadows, no light in the room but the fire burning low in the hearth.
“Are you looking for anything in particular?” Draco had asked, stifling a yawn.
“No,” the Dark Lord replied.
“Well, alright then.” With no further thought, Draco went back to bed, sleeping till Delphi woke him at dawn.
*
“Would you like some?” Draco asked one evening. He put the pot of tomato soup down on the dining table and turning to look at the Dark Lord expectantly. Usually, he’d left already by the time Draco had finished cooking.
“Why not?” the Dark Lord said, lip curling, as if Draco had said something amusing.
And so they sat opposite each other, eating from cheery little porcelain bowls with strings of orange orchards painted around the rims.
Draco could think of nothing to say and the Dark Lord did not seem inclined toward conversation either, so the meal passed in tranquil silence. The Dark Lord ate slowly, with no real enthusiasm, but finished his bowl nevertheless.
This time, when he went to leave, Draco followed him to the door, Delphi on one hip. “Goodnight,” he said and lifted Delphi’s tiny hand up to wave it at the Dark Lord. “Say goodnight to Papa, Delphi.”
“Ba,” she said.
The Dark Lord’s cold gaze swept from Draco to Delphi and then back again. He left without another word.
“Baba,” Delphi said, once they were alone.
“Oh,” Draco said, smiling down at her. “Say it again.”
But she didn’t, burying her head against his chest and making a wobbly, displeased sound.
*
After that meal, the Dark Lord did not return for a long time. It wasn’t till Draco woke to see him standing over the cot again that he realised how much time had passed. The wisteria twisting past the window was ageing yellow-gold. It was autumn already, though he could’ve sworn it’d just been spring.
The war had been over for five months. Draco had been eighteen for three.
“Poor thing,” he said to Delphi, going over to her cot. “You’ve been cooped up here so long. It’ll be your birthday before we know it.”
She crawled over to him and used the bars of her cot to stand up. He put his arm out to steady her as she wobbled.
“Very impressive,” he said.
*
He’d scarcely pushed Delphi’s pram out the door when the Dark Lord appeared, as if he’d materialised out of thin air, looming over Draco. His long, pale fingers curled over the handle of the pram, stopping Draco from pushing her any further.
Delphi gurgled and clapped her hands, as delighted as ever to see her father. But she was ignored, the Dark Lord’s attention solely on Draco.
“Where, exactly, were you intending to go?” he asked, eyes narrowed.
He was angry, Draco thought distantly. He couldn’t imagine why. “We’re going for a walk in the orchard,” he said, smiling down at Delphi. “It’s a lovely day today, isn’t it, Delphi?”
She giggled, the sweet sound of infant laughter filling the shadowy hallway. Looking around, Draco noticed that it’d changed a lot since the last time he’d seen it. The portraits had been stripped from the walls, the carpets gone, drapes pulled shut.
“Goodness,” he said, blinking slowly. “Why, it looks as if the Manor’s been ransacked.”
“You may not take her to the orchard,” the Dark Lord said. “It has been… repurposed.”
“Oh,” Draco said, disappointed. “But Mother always used to take me there.”
Delphi, ever quick to discern his moods, made a discontented noise, cheeks puffing out.
“Don’t sulk,” he said, crouching down and tickling her belly. “I never said we wouldn’t still be going out.” Once she was giggling again, he stood up. “How about the path to the forest?” He understood the answer from the Dark Lord’s expression before even needing to speak. “Repurposed too?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I shall take you somewhere better.”
*
The Dark Lord summoned a Portkey that deposited them on an empty beach, the sky a high blue arch above them. There were stone houses with terracotta rooves built almost all the way up to the sand, yet Draco could not hear or see a single human.
“Saint Tropez,” he said, recognising his surroundings at once. “I’ve always wanted to come here, but Father says there are too many Muggles.”
“That will no longer be a concern,” the Dark Lord said. It was bizarre to see him standing on a beach in his long black robes; pale, snake-like features twisted into an expression of mild distaste as he gazed down at the ocean.
“You’re going to get a sunburn,” Draco said. He conjured two umbrellas, one for himself and Delphi, one for the Dark Lord.
The Dark Lord looked amused but took it anyway.
They walked along the beach without speaking. It should have been absurd, it should have been awkward or perhaps terrifying, but Delphi was laughing, gazing out at the sparkling ocean with awe-filled dark eyes, and Draco couldn’t muster any emotion at all.
When sand stuck in the wheels of her pram, the Dark Lord transfigured them to run without disruption. When an unexpected wave leapt up and drenched Draco’s socks, the Dark Lord performed the drying spell without even lifting his wand.
There were hundreds of boats tied up at the docks, but many were half-sunk, heavy with barnacles, their hulls rotting. They were beautiful boats, Draco thought distantly. Once, for every boat, there had been a person who loved and cared for them. Yet now they sat abandoned, forgotten.
Through a window, he saw a strange sight within the cabin of one of the boats. Chairs were overturned, a back window partly cracked, and splattered everywhere was a reddish brown liquid that’d dried and was cracked and peeling. Before he could ask, the Dark Lord was encouraging him forward with a hand on his back.
“Best not look too closely,” he said.
Draco walked up and down the beach with Delphi for almost an hour, yet never once heard or saw a single Muggle.
“That was nice,” he said, returning to their arrival point. “We ought to do that again sometime.”
“Have you had enough already?” the Dark Lord asked, voice still light with that cold amusement.
“Delphi has,” Draco said, looking down at her sleeping in the pram. One of her little hands was over her head, the other on her belly.
*
The Dark Lord came more frequently after that. First once a fortnight, then once to twice a week, till eventually, he was eating dinner with Draco every night.
“What’s happening out there?” Draco asked one night.
“Many things are changing,” the Dark Lord said.
Draco nodded and went back to cutting up his chicken. He didn’t want to know more than that, the small niggling of guilt in his stomach settled by asking the question
Delphi was on solids now, mashed avocado her favourite. “Here comes the broom,” Draco sang, lifting the spoon to her mouth with a swishing sound.
The Dark Lord watched.
Later, when Draco and Delphi saw him out, the Dark Lord stopped in the doorway, looking down at Draco with searching eyes.
“My lord?” Draco asked.
But he said nothing.
“Baba!” Delphi interrupted.
Draco laughed, kissed her forehead. “Sounds like Delphi wants her Papa’s attention. Won’t you give her a kiss goodbye?”
“Hm,” the Dark Lord said. “Very well.” He stooped and kissed Delphi’s forehead, just a quick brush of contact.
She gazed up at him with open adoration. “Baba!”
As always, her happiness coaxed the small bubble of warmth in Draco’s chest. He smiled at her, then smiled at the Dark Lord. “Goodnight,” he said.
The Dark Lord left.
*
They fell into a routine; the Dark Lord ate dinner with them and showed Delphi some brief affection when they saw him off at the door. He was always gone by seven o’clock, which was good because that was close to Delphi’s bedtime anyway.
In the evenings, he watched Draco and Delphi with an aloof sort of curiosity, as if they were exhibits in a zoo.
“She’ll grow up weak if you continue to infantilise her,” he said one evening, watching Draco soothe Delphi after a tantrum.
“She is an infant,” Draco said, but didn’t argue any further. After all, he had been coddled as a child too and was, by all definitions, weak.
*
Autumn became winter, Delphi was eleven months old, and it was Christmas, just the two of them in their rooms. The Dark Lord had been gone a month. Overseas, he’d said and not elaborated. Draco had accepted his answer with no desire to push further.
He tried to imagine what it would be like if the Dark Lord never returned. Draco thought he could continue his life the way he had been for years, the two of them alone and forgotten on the third floor of the East Wing.
But Delphi would grow up, he realised, watching her taking shaky steps with the support of the wall. What then? It would only be Draco stuck in time. Alone.
The idea calcified in his chest, a hard, painful lump. He shut his eyes, focused on his breathing.
“Let’s go out,” he said.
He never went out without the Dark Lord, and only ever to the places he directed. Now that he thought about it, Draco couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard footsteps or voices in the hallway outside the nursery. Perhaps they’ve all moved out, he thought, quite liking the idea.
The hallway looked much the same as it had all those months ago, walls and floors bare. His footsteps echoed, the wheels of the pram rattling along over the floorboards.
He’d begun to feel more confident, more settled in his independent exploration of the Manor, when he came to the staircase and discovered that he couldn’t take a single step down.
There were spells and wards weaved together so densely that even with his wand it would take him a lifetime to pick apart the protections. He tried the windows at the ends of the hallway but found them equally bound shut.
The lump in his chest felt as if it was growing larger by the minute. Distantly, he could hear Delphi crying, upset by his distress. He sat at the top of the stairs and fixed his eyes on the sliver of second-floor carpet that he was able to glimpse from where he was. He stayed there for a long time, till the shadows grew long, the sun sinking low in the sky.
Eventually, the Dark Lord appeared. Even without speaking, Draco could tell he was angry.
“I believe we’ve had this conversation before,” the Dark Lord said finally.
“I just wanted to take Delphi out,” Draco said numbly. He drew his legs up and hugged them to his chest.
“I would have taken you.”
“Without you,” Draco snapped, and then regretted his tone. “I just wanted to go by myself.”
“Without a coat? Without blankets for her?” the Dark Lord’s voice rang with contempt. “It’s snowing, Draco.”
“I don’t know. I just—I wanted—” Draco buried his face in his hands, all of a sudden overwhelmed by a burst of grief. He wasn’t sure where it was coming from, nor what he was grieving. “It’s Christmas,” he said, voice wobbling. “It’s Christmas.”
The Dark Lord said nothing, waiting until Draco’s shaking abated. “Go back to your rooms,” he said.
“Yes, sir,” Draco said, tired and small. He wheeled Delphi back to their room and put her in her cot, for once ignoring her disappointed cries. Under his duvet he went, curling up. He didn’t come out for a long time.
*
Time dribbled by in a strange, disjointed way. Draco fed Delphi when she cried and washed her when her hair began to stick to her forehead, but otherwise did little other than lay in bed, staring up at the ceiling. It was as if something brittle had broken in his chest, something that had been growing larger and more fragile over the months since that day at Hogwarts.
The Dark Lord came by at increasingly random times. Where once he would’ve come at six o’clock precisely each night, now Draco would wake to his presence at all times of the day and night. Draco remembered little of those times, the world blurring and distorting, so grey that it did not seem real.
“You’re neglecting her,” the Dark Lord said one evening. His tone was blunt, but he did not seem angry.
“M’not,” Draco said. “I’ll feed her in a moment.”
When the Dark Lord returned an hour later, he still hadn’t moved from his spot curled up beneath the duvet.
Draco stared up at him, trying to remember what he was waiting for.
“Don’t trouble yourself,” the Dark Lord said. He stepped out of Draco’s line of sight, toward the alcove with the kitchenette. Draco listened to the hiss of the stove turning on, the splash of water filling a pot, the steady sound of a knife slicing through vegetables.
He rolled over and watched him. “I didn’t know you could cook,” Draco said sleepily.
“I haven’t always had this form, Draco. All humans require basic sustenance.”
Draco had never once thought of the Dark Lord as human. “What’s your favourite food?” he asked, sitting up a little and wrapping the duvet tighter around himself.
There was a pause before the chopping resumed. “I don’t have one.”
“Liar,” Draco said, stifling a yawn. “Bet it’s something plebeian like fish and chips and that’s why you won’t tell me.”
The Dark Lord said nothing, which was confirmation enough for Draco.
*
It wasn’t until a month had passed with no change in Draco’s behaviour that the Dark Lord became truly angry. He arrived each morning at sunrise and demanded he get out of bed. If Draco dallied, then he would strip the blankets from the bed and force him up. He returned at meal times with increasing frequency and was quick to criticise if Delphi’s used nappy was left unchanged for any length of time at all.
Hardly any of it registered to Draco, and later, on reflection, he couldn’t have said if the Dark Lord had actually come by every day or if it had been more or far less frequently than that.
“What’s the matter with you?” he snapped upon finding Draco curled up in the shower, frigid water thundering down on his head. “Are you sick?”
“Five more minutes,” Draco mumbled through chattering teeth.
The Dark Lord ignored him, turning the tap to warm till he stopped shaking, then threw a towel on him and dragged him out from the shower.
*
The Dark Lord tried to take him to a Healer, but when Draco heard that he’d have to leave Delphi behind, he threw a tantrum unlike any he’d thrown since childhood, refusing to go.
“You’ll have to drag me,” he shouted, grabbing the mantlepiece clock and throwing it at him. It didn’t go far, the Dark Lord stopping it in the air with a mere glance. Still, the message was received.
Instead, the Dark Lord brought the Healer into the Study and had him see Draco there. He was a warm older man from a respectable family and had once been the Malfoy family Healer.
The whole time, Draco shook like a leaf, so unused to speaking to anyone other than Delphi and the Dark Lord. After every question he was asked, he turned to the Dark Lord rather than answer himself. When the Healer siphoned out blood for tests, Draco clung to the Dark Lord’s hand. He wasn’t thrown off, so he didn’t let go.
The Healer did an impressive job of ignoring the Dark Lord’s presence, though he was not foolish enough to ask him to step out when he began disclosing his private medical opinion.
“There’s nothing medically wrong with you,” the Healer said finally, smiling apologetically. “I’d recommend getting some more exercise, sunlight and eating a wider range of food, but otherwise there isn’t much else I can do.”
“What use are you, then?” the Dark Lord said.
“I could certainly prescribe him daily Cheering Potions, but that would do more harm than good in the long run,” the Healer said frankly. “Given the recent traumas he has suffered and his current living conditions, this outcome is not unexpected. The only surprising thing is that it has taken so long to escalate to this point.”
*
The Dark Lord was silent for a while after the Healer left. Then he said, “What brought this on?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Draco said. He went to the bedroom and picked up Delphi, bouncing her in his arms.
She grinned up at him, her tiny little teeth visible. “Day-co!”
“And all this is about, what? Your wish to frolic through the Manor with no protection?”
“What are we going to play today, Delphi?” Draco asked in a sing-song voice. “Are we two polar bears on an iceberg in the middle of the sea?”
The Dark Lord grabbed his arm and yanked him around. Delphi squealed in surprised fear, wrapping her arms around Draco’s neck. The Dark Lord tightened his grip around Draco’s elbows, leaning down, pulling him in closer. “Do not ignore me when I speak to you,” he hissed.
Draco blinked up at him and tried to say something, but no words came to him, his mind gone blank. “Um,” he said, and then was distracted by Delphi bursting into tears. “Oh dear,” he murmured. He patted her back as well as he could while still dealing with the Dark Lord’s vice-like grip on his arms. “There, there.”
Now that she was bigger, she could cry much louder and longer than she had when she’d been younger. She demonstrated that skill now, wailing at the top of her lungs as the Dark Lord grew more agitated.
“What’s wrong, Delphi?” Draco asked. “Did Papa scare you?”
“No!” she wailed.
“That isn’t all that convincing.”
“Ridiculous,” the Dark Lord muttered. Then, sharply, “Give her to me.”
“Do you want Papa?” Draco asked.
“Yes!”
“Well,” he said, smiling, “Princess has spoken.”
Despite having never shown any interest in holding his daughter, the Dark Lord handled her with ease. He scooped her up with one arm, wordlessly summoning her dummy into his other hand. “Occupy yourself with this,” he said, sticking it into her mouth. He needn’t have bothered with the soother, as soon as she’d been put in his arms, she had quietened, gazing up at him with awe-filled dark eyes.
Since she’d come into his care, Draco had never even imagined allowing anyone else to hold her. But he wasn’t troubled by the Dark Lord doing so. He was her father, after all. Blood was blood.
“Why did you choose to have a child?” Draco asked. He knew the Dark Lord had been around a long while. Though he wasn’t sure how old he was, Draco knew that Father had been nineteen when he took the Dark Mark and that the Dark Lord had been around for a number of years before then.
“Bella wanted one.”
“Oh,” Draco said. “And she couldn’t with Uncle Rodolphus?”
The Dark Lord looked amused. “Not after she cursed him infertile on their wedding night.”
Draco had heard the rumour. “That does sound like Aunt Bella,” he said, smiling down at his hands. “What changed her mind?”
“Time. Mortality. Posterity.”
It was very much a pureblood’s answer. Draco said nothing, watching Delphi’s darling face as she continued to goggle at her father. “But you didn’t personally want…?” Even though she was too young to understand, he still couldn’t bring himself to say it in front of her.
“No.”
“Oh.” A child with a dead mother who’d only wanted her for a legacy, and a father who hadn’t wanted her at all. That was okay. Draco wanted her enough to make up for the both of them. “Have you changed your mind?”
There was silence. Draco looked up and saw that the Dark Lord was gazing down at Delphi, an unreadable expression in his eyes. “Perhaps,” he said.
*
Sometimes, Draco dreamed. Horrible, vicious nightmares that brought to the fore everything he was trying to hide from. He saw his mother’s cold, dead eyes reflecting orange-gold as Hogwarts burned in the distance; his father’s twisted, tortured corpse.
He woke with tears streaming down his face, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead, pain and guilt twisting his gut. Always, he turned his face into his pillow so as to not disturb Delphi, as he begged the memories to relent.
*
“Is Hogwarts still a school?” Draco asked. The Dark Lord had taken them to a stone town in Tuscany, just as eerily empty as Saint Tropez. Even despite it being winter, grass and weeds grew wild on the cobbled streets. Delphi’s pram kept getting snagged on them to the point where Draco had given up and was just levitating her along between them.
“Yes,” the Dark Lord said.
“Just for purebloods?”
“And half-bloods.”
Aunt Bella wouldn’t have liked that. Still, there would be hardly any students left without the half-bloods. “What about blood traitors?”
“If they renounce their prior loyalties, yes. It’s difficult for parents to muster much rebellion when their children are under my… protection.”
“Hmm,” Draco said. “And what about in ten years? Will Hogwarts still be there?”
The Dark Lord looked down at Delphi in her pram, bobbing along beside him. She giggled and waved. “Hogwarts will always be there.”
When it was time for them to return to England, Draco peered back down at the little town. There was a hollow, empty feeling in his chest that had been compounded by the silence. Once, thousands of people had lived there.
He’d seen a little girl’s shoe caught in the railings of a gutter, as if she’d been running, as if she’d been in too much of a hurry to go back for it. Most of the canvas had gone greyish-brown from the gutter water, but the heel was still bright pink.
*
In early spring, the Dark Lord found them out in the third-floor hallway. Draco had dragged a chair to the window and was gazing out at the forest. Delphi was bumbling around, supporting herself against the wall.
“Papa!” she cheered.
The Dark Lord picked her up and put her on his shoulder, approaching Draco at a languid pace. “What is occupying your thoughts?” he asked, summoning a chair for himself with a flick of his wand.
Delphi laughed and clapped her hands when it came flying down the hallway.
“I was just thinking that it would be nice to be able to take Delphi out for a walk every day,” Draco said.
“You can walk her through the hallways on the third floor.”
“Yes, but…”
“Is that not good enough for you?”
“I’m sick of living here,” Draco said. He’d meant for the words to sound petulant, his usual tone for getting what he wanted, but they only came out thin and tired. As if he’d said them a million times.
He expected the Dark Lord to become angry, but he did not, scrutinising Draco with his cold red eyes. “And what is the matter with where you’re living now, Draco? It is your ancestral home, is it not?”
“Yes, but it won’t be good enough for Delphi when she’d older,” Draco said. “She needs somewhere safe. Where she can go outside to explore and play without having to worry about werewolves or dementors or strange men. It isn’t healthy for her whole world to be just two rooms. And—” He broke off.
“And?” the Dark Lord repeated, leaning closer, voice gone soft.
“If she spends all her time around adults then she’ll have to grow up too fast. She needs other children her age. Otherwise, she’ll—she’ll be lonely.” Draco stopped speaking for a moment, feeling as if he was running out of air. “I don’t want her to be lonely.”
“I see,” the Dark Lord said, still in that soft voice. His hand had come up, fingers curling carefully in the hair at the nape of Draco’s neck. “And what else does she need?”
“She doesn’t need anything else,” Draco said. “Just that would be enough.”
“And what about you, Draco? What do you need?”
Draco was silent. “I don’t know,” he said eventually, “I don’t think I need anything at all.”
*
The Dark Lord did not allow them to move from the Manor, however he cleared the Death Eaters entirely out of the East Wing and warded off the gardens for Delphi’s enjoyment. The werewolves were banished from the property and the dementors sent back to Azkaban.
“Discipline is long overdue,” the Dark Lord said. “The half-breeds have served their purpose.”
He suggested Draco begin attending Death Eater meetings again, but relented when all Draco could ask, white-faced and shaking, was, “Why? What have I done wrong?”
Draco took Delphi to the crypt so that she could meet her aunt and uncle. He didn’t know where Aunt Bella had been interred, whether her body had been recovered at all.
The Dark Lord followed them in on one of their visits. Draco noticed him glance at Grandfather Abraxas’s coffin again.
“Did you know him?” Draco asked.
“Unfortunately,” the Dark Lord said.
Draco nodded. It was generally what everyone who’d known Grandfather Abraxas said when asked about him.
*
Once, from a window, Draco caught sight of Goyle. Though he was wearing the cloak and mask of a junior Death Eater, he recognised him at once. Draco watched for a while, curled up in the window sill. The Dark Lord had removed the wards barring him from access to the rest of the Manor. If he wanted to, he could go down and speak to him, ask how he’d been.
But he thought of the fiendfyre, of Crabbe swallowed up, dying in pain. He thought of Potter, risking himself to come back and save them. Then Potter again, decapitated, head on a pike. The Dark Lord victorious.
“Day-co!” Delphi called.
“I’m coming,” he said, standing. He did not spare the window another glance.
*
In summer, he woke to a sight that was both familiar and like nothing he had seen before.
The Dark Lord was sitting in the chair by the window, Delphi on his lap. She was babbling away in her half-English, half-gibberish way while he listened, nodding as if what she was saying actually made sense.
“She’s a legilimens,” he said during a lull in her babbling, looking up and meeting Draco’s eye.
“Good morning to you too,” Draco said. “Would you bring her here?”
The Dark Lord did so, sitting down on the bed beside Draco.
Draco rolled over onto his stomach, resting his head on his hands. “Have you been sneaking into peoples’ heads, Delphi?” he asked in a mock angry voice.
“Yeah!” she said.
“You don’t seem surprised,” the Dark Lord said.
“She’d been trying to break my occlumency shields since she was six hours old,” Draco said. “Not really a surprise, no. And she is your daughter.”
The Dark Lord looked pensive. “Yes, she is,” he said. It sounded as if it was sinking in for the first time.
“You ought to show her a snake next,” Draco said. “See if she inherited the Parseltongue.”
“Perhaps.”
*
Simultaneously, it seemed both as if Delphi grew so fast, and as if centuries had passed since that day he’d met her—tiny and pink-cheeked, together with her mother.
“Did you love Aunt Bella?” Draco asked, sitting on a picnic blanket in the gardens, Delphi sprawled beside him. The Dark Lord stood and watched, half-shrouded by the trees.
“What answer would you like, Draco?”
“The truth,” he said.
“Then, no.”
Draco nodded, lying down on his back, gazing up at the cloudless blue expanse of the sky. “My father loved my mother more than the world.”
“More than you?”
“No,” he said, without even needing to think about it. “Father loved me differently, but not less.”
*
He went to his parents’ room at last, just as he’d wanted to a year before. There was no dust, the house elves ever diligent in their cleaning. Yet even they could not stop the subtler changes. Mother’s vase was full of the wrong flowers; she’d always hand-picked them and the elves didn’t understand the importance of colour, balance and meaning as she had. The scents were gone from the air—Father’s cologne, Mother’s perfumes and moisturisers.
There were pictures of Draco from every year of school from first to fifth, smiling smugly at the camera, expression briefly going soft each time he met his mother’s eye above the lens. They had no pictures from sixth or seventh year. Perhaps he’d become too much of an embarrassment by then; perhaps they were ashamed of his hollow eyes and skinny face.
He picked up Mother’s pillow first, kissed it and laid it back down, then did the same to Father’s.
“Goodbye,” he said. “I love you both. Goodbye.”