Chapter Text
It took too long for him to realize it, but as Draco stood before his parents’ graves, the bitter truth finally had the chance to sink in. And he had to admit, he had made a fool of himself.
Draco had been too arrogant and cowardly. He made all the wrong choices and ultimately spent his whole life being nothing more than a puppet on strings at the hands of whoever managed to scare him into submission.
First his father, then Riddle, and finally, the Ministry.
He should feel ashamed, he knew. But Draco had been a fool for too long to waste any more energy feeling sorry for himself.
The realization that he had nothing left was the next to sink in. But that felt different.
There was no pain.
Instead, he felt this deep numbness spread through his body and mind. It was almost liberating. It was like he was free for the first time.
It was also rather ironic.
Draco had been a passionate reader since young and was no stranger to fictional books that described the feeling of freedom as opening one’s eyes and seeing the world in colours for the first time. But that was not what he felt. Time did feel like it had slowed down for him. The world seemed bigger. All light was brighter, all shadows darker. And nothing else really mattered. But the colours? If anything, all vivid ones seemed to fade away into mute tones. Black, white and grey were truly the only colours that remained clear in his eyes.
Should Draco ever choose to be honest with himself, he'd admit how he had seen this end coming for a while. He had been racist, spoiled, and a bully as a child. Had joined a terrorist group as a teenager. Attempted three murders and even tortured several innocent people. All without ever truly thinking about why or regretting any of it.
He supposed that his choices had all been a matter of the opportunity they presented.
Draco could remember always feeling small and unimportant. Always scared and so, always the one to choose self-preservation and self-satisfaction no matter the circumstances. He remembered feeling so angry at the people around him who seemed so much more important, who all seemed to know what they were destined to be. People like Granger, Potter and the Weasleys. Who all seemed to have nothing but big dreams and either the confidence that they would achieve such dreams or the courage to fight for them.
But Draco wasn't like that; he couldn't bring himself to be like that.
At the time, he felt it was their fault he wasn't special or important, which wasn't fair. He had been such a self-centred brat that he didn't even realize it had all been jealousy until one random night, after a gruesome nightmare when he was still in a cell in Azkaban.
It was the first time he had stopped to think about everything, the first time he began asking himself the right questions, such as “ when had he become so pathetic?” and “ why had he made those terrible choices?”.
The answers he got were more than appalling, and he feared what he might have done to his younger self should he ever have the chance to meet him face-to-face.
But not all was bad. Azkaban had been his home for three long years, giving Draco several opportunities for more such introspective sessions.
They helped him acquaint himself, rather intimately, with the concept of the ethical consequences of one’s actions.
Draco was never the type to believe in abstract, metaphysical stances such as karma. Of course, magic was real, but the idea that the universe would be there waiting at the end of the road for the final reckoning still sounded ridiculous to his ears. However, regardless of what it was called, as he grew older and with each hex and slur sent his way as he walked the streets, with each night he spent in hunger after another day of being humiliated and denied work due to the things he had done, with each new hour of introspection, he was forced to concede, Karma sure was a fitting metaphor for it all.
Draco pushed some of his hair behind his ear and took one of his earphones out. It had grown quite long during his stay in Azkaban, and he never cut it - initially because he hadn't found the time to, and later simply because he had gotten so accustomed to it that it now hung at waist length.
He took a drag of his cigarette and looked at his mother’s gravestone again.
Draco wasn’t sure how long he had been standing there, but he had skipped lunch to attend her burial, but the sun had long set.
He assumed the sharp pangs in his calves would fade soon since he could already feel the pins and needles taking over his legs. His lower back had been pulsating painfully, too, but he couldn’t find it in himself to leave just yet.
There was no funeral. No need for one, as no one else was alive who cared. He buried her alone.
Of all Blacks, Andromeda was the last one alive, and she had been clear about her lack of interest in anything happening with her sister the one and last time they spoke. The rest of wizarding Britain would like nothing more than for the Malfoy line to end, too. And Draco understood their position. It didn’t make him feel any less bitter about it, but he understood.
Riddle’s wars had taken too much from everyone. Families had been torn apart, and properties had been destroyed. There had been enough betrayal, death and mindless torture to feed everyone's nightmares for ages.
Draco would know. He still had them, still spent nights curled up and shaking silently in some corner of his tiny, dreary flat after waking up haunted by roaring flames, agonizing screams, green flashes and red eyes. Some nights were bad enough for his mother to sit with him so he would not be alone.
But she was gone now.
Draco, like everyone else, had also lost to the war. He began losing to the war before it had even truly started. His innocence and dreams were the first to die after he had watched children be tortured and murdered simply for existing, his family's home be corrupted by dark magic, and losing Pansy in the room of requirement - she had been his one, true best friend.
But it was after the war ended that it truly started taking all he had.
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Immediately after it was all over and his side had lost, Draco lost his freedom, his wand and any right to do magic. He lost the right to complete his education and, consequently, any chance of ever having a decent job.
Soon after, he lost his father. Who passed away in Azkaban.
As fate would have it, they were neighbours and Draco was forced onto a front-row seat to the show of his father’s health decline and, ultimately, death. He had already taken on the habit of thinking more deeply about things by then and found it all quite poetic in a way. His father, who was promised nothing less than glory by his Lord, died a poor, disgraced man in a tiny, dirty cell.
Still, the war was not done taking things from him. It wouldn't be done for a long while yet.
Draco was released on parole three years later, but the scars left by the war were still too fresh in everyone’s hearts.
The mark on his arm was a bitter reminder for everyone of all the pain caused by Riddle’s obsession, and the Ministry chose to make an example out of Draco to discourage any future dark lords from attempting anything. They used the disgrace of the Malfoy name as a warning and essentially turned Draco into a pariah.
Draco's first year on parole was spent doing odd jobs for whatever establishment would accept his services. Most of which had been less than reputable. But Draco needed to ensure he and his mother would not starve.
Seeing as his family’s reputation was ruined beyond repair, no one truly wanted to hire him.
Those who did hire him made it a point to ensure he knew his new position in their society.
He was forced to accept their unfair treatment and wages just to stay alive.
On several occasions, his mother had tried appealing to the Ministry to return at least a small portion of their seized fortune. However, none of her requests ever seemed to be taken forward. It wasn't until two years later that they received a notice about how all seized Malfoy and Lestrange properties and vaults had been liquidated and used to pay the compensations to families affected by the war.
When Draco realized there was no longer a future for him amidst the wizarding community, he decided to move to muddle London with his mother.
It took a lot of getting used to, but he came to appreciate muggles’ resourcefulness in how they did things. He found cars, electricity, televisions and cassette players fascinating despite the fact their sense of fashing was rather lacking.
Draco learned to adapt. They needed money to survive, so he had to find work wherever he could.
It was difficult at first. For all his outstanding grades in school, the muggle world had no use for his magic knowledge, and he was forced to work more manual jobs than ever before. It consequently made him stronger, and soon, he was able to stop relying on magic altogether.
His mother still used it at home for small things. She hadn’t been banned from using it like he did, nor had her wand been taken away. But she also kept its use to a minimum, mindful of the fact they now lived among muggles.
It was just as Draco’s 5-year parole was about to end that he first heard any news from the wizarding community again. He had come home from work sticky with sweat and feeling tension in muscles he didn’t even know existed when his mother met him at the door. With an issue of the Daily Prophet from a month before in hand and a sombre expression on her face.
The front page featured an old photo of him, taken the day he had been released from Azkaban, and the article dramatically read something like ‘the last death eater’.
Draco remembered feeling too tired to be anything but confused about why his mother looked so stressed and barely catching on to her frenzied rant. She explained how the article claimed all identified former death eaters had now been confirmed dead - either having passed away in Azkaban, like his father, or in conflicts with Aurors who still had been searching for the few who had managed to evade capture. The article also discussed how Draco was the only one left, which, his mother feared, might have people come after him with ill intent.
Draco had quickly dismissed her worries but promised to remain cautious and continue avoiding contact with wizards, magic or Aurors. Of course, it hadn’t been enough to put her at ease. So they made plans to continue building up their savings for a little while longer and then move out of the continent for a fresh start.
They agreed they were tired of Europe anyway, that anywhere they could have their privacy was better than London. But South America might be too hot, Australia too close, America too unrefined. And after days of revisiting the discussion, they finally settled for a small town in Canada his mother had visited before marrying his father.
It had been the first time Draco had seen his mother so excited about something in ages, the first time in a long time that Draco had felt settled and hopeful.
But the war still had accounts to settle with him.
Not much later, his mother’s worries were proven well-founded when a stranger cornered them as they returned home with their groceries on a quiet weekend with a sneer.
It all happened too fast. Both of them had gotten too used to living as muggles to think to defend themselves. Even if Draco wished to, he would not have been able to do so without breaking the rules of his parole, which was only days away from being over.
There was a sudden flash of red. His mother pushed him out of the way but was struck in his place.
The whole thing was still a blur in his mind to this day. He vaguely remembered shouting for his mother as she lay unconscious in his arms and her lack of response. He remembered the loud crackle of apparition behind him and suddenly being surrounded by Aurors in their billowing robes. He remembered being dragged away from his mother, kicking and shouting. And he remembered the visceral fear that burned bright and fierce in his chest.
By the time he finally got himself together, he was cuffed and sitting in front of none other than one Ronald Weasley.
Draco disregarded the man’s disgusted look trained on him in favour of asking for his mother.
“Narcissa has been taken to St. Mungos. She’s been cursed. They couldn't identify the curse used, but she has woken up,” Weasley informed him. “What happened?”
Draco had stared at the Auror long and hard, feeling equally at ease and enraged by that information. The questioning process with Weasley that followed had been as pleasant as pulling teeth with the most useless of all rusty pliers. And given Draco’s involvement in the war, no one was really interested or in a rush to identify the one responsible for his mother’s situation. Additionally, with Weasley’s mutual dislike for Draco since they were kids and their antagonistic history, Draco was not surprised when he was forced to spend the night in a holding cell despite being a victim. He was even less surprised by how unpleasant the Aurors were as they collected his memories of the attack as evidence.
When he was released, after being warned he should remain in the city while the investigation was ongoing but finally allowed to visit his mother, Draco could do nothing but bitterly accept his fate.
After moving to muggle London and settling in, Draco never expected to set foot in the wizarding parts of Britain again. And as he walked through the corridors of the Ministry, making his way to the as slurs and jinxes were flung at his back, he was reminded of the reason why.
Draco thought he had gotten used to it. To being despised and looked down upon, that is. He had gotten used to the fact he was no longer part of a high society just fine, that he had no riches or power left to his name. However, once he witnessed how his mother was treated, he was forced to reconsider.
He had found her looking pained and shaken, sitting alone at the entrance of St. Mungos like some lost child. Later, once they finally returned to the small flat they shared, he learned the Aurors and Healers simply advised her to leave as soon as she woke up. They did not at all look into the curse that was used and had no plans of doing so, so long as she was awake and able to walk.
Draco noticed that raging fear, which had still been burning in his chest since he saw his mother get cursed, start to darken and morph into anger, but he kept it to himself.
He returned to the Ministry for the removal of his parole Trace two days later and was intercepted by Granger, who had offered him a few words of concern for his mother. She appeared shocked by Draco’s casual muggle clothes but was wise enough not to mention it.
It was through her that Draco learned Weasley and his team had managed to identify his mother’s attacker and were currently trying to locate the man. He could only nod at her attempt at comforting him by asking that he be patient until the Auror department reached out to him and his mother with any news.
Things went back to normal for a while after that.
Draco continued working his muggle job and adding to his and his mother’s savings. They agreed their plan of leaving Europe was more important than ever.
But plans were just that: plans.
It was a little over a week later when Draco came home from work to find his mother unconscious on the floor, blood dripping from her eyes, ears and nose. Her body was still and cold. And for the second time, his chest was set aflame with fear so deep it completely muddled his mind.
Draco’s memories were a complete blank for most of the happenings of that evening. That time, when he came to, he was sitting on the floor in a random corridor at St. Mungo’s as a receptionist patted his back, whispering words that barely registered.
His feet were bare and filthy. He felt utterly lost and so empty he felt his chest would collapse.
The receptionist was kind enough to tell him all she knew once he gathered enough of his racing thoughts to formulate the question properly. He had barged in, panicked and pale-faced, with his mother’s body in his arms. Apparently, he had carried her all across the city, barefoot and completely unaware of his surroundings.
He was advised to wait in the reception area for the Auror responsible for his case to take his statement.
Draco lost track of time then. A few minutes or years could have passed before Weasley approached him. He couldn't be sure.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the man said hesitantly. But Draco chose to remain silent, and the Auror guided him away.
Weasley apparated them to the Ministry and took Draco to that same questioning room from before. He then told him the man who attacked him and his mother had been found. He was simply one of the many people affected by the war. A civilian after revenge. The man had Obliviated himself but left a written confession in which he declared death eaters had killed his whole family and argued it was only right they all paid for it. In his confession letter, he also admitted his target to have been Draco initially. However, it served him right that the last of his family had been the one to die instead so that he be submitted to the same pain the man had gone through for the past eight years.
Draco never caught the man’s name. He didn’t want to know. He just wanted to go home.
“I want to go home,” he told Weasley, and the man nodded.
He had Draco sign some papers and was kind enough to apparate him home, seeing as he had no money to hail a cab and no shoes.
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Yes, like everyone else, Draco had lost to the war.
It was just one of those things that took and took until there was nothing left to take.
Draco wondered if, perhaps, it was over, as he tossed his cigarette. He had nothing left to lose.