Chapter Text
Disclaimer: They are not mine. Ah, that they were....
Warning: This is a Vampire fic, written for HPVamps Free Range Bunny exchange.
REMEMBERED FIRE
Part One
…Panic roared through his veins.
They’d been betrayed. Someone on the team had let their location slip; it was the only answer for the ambush that had been awaiting them when they’d Apparated to the destination point. He’d barely had time to hit the ground on his stomach before he heard shouting, and curses were whizzing over his head.
“It’s them!” he heard someone shout roughly as another green jet of light streaked so close to his head that he felt it singe the ends of his white-blond hair.
“Malfoy! Malfoy, come on!”
He looked up and saw Weasley reaching for him, freckled hand outstretched, and he lunged for it like a life line, allowing himself to be yanked behind a brick wall.
“What the fuck…?” he started, then flinched and pressed his head against the bricks when a curse hit the corner near him, blasting away bits of masonry.
“Ambush,” Weasley answered breathlessly, blue eyes unnaturally wide in his pale face. “Had to be… son of a bitch!”
Those words were the only warning Draco got that their new position had been compromised before a red light flashed across in front of them, striking his right thigh with a vicious slash. He knew he cried out in pain, because he’d never felt anything quite like it, and he looked down to see the dark trousers torn, the fleshy part of his leg beneath sliced nearly to the bone. He pressed his hand over the welling wound, but soon blood was pooling between his fingers, and when he tried to move, the leg was useless. It dragged behind him when Weasley grabbed his robe at the shoulder and tried to run for it.
“I can’t,” Draco cried out. “My leg. Go, just… go!”
“I can’t leave you here,” Weasley answered frantically. “Harry would never forgive me…”
“He’d never forgive me if you got yourself killed on my account…” Draco gave him a hard shove. “Go, for fuck’s sake…”
Weasley looked as if he were going to argue further when they both heard an almost animalistic scream, frightening and terrible, and looked up as one to see Harry Potter dodging hexes, muscular body ducking and weaving, dashing towards them, his robes flying and his wand shooting spells as he came.
“It’s Potter!” Someone yelled triumphantly.
“No,” Draco said desperately.
“Get him out!” Harry shouted at Ron before turning. “Get him out! Now!”
He felt an arm lock tight around his waist, felt himself jerked up and back against a strong chest, and just as Weasley was turning, Apparating them away, he saw the vile green curse that hit Harry square in the chest. He saw him go stock still and then crumble to the ground like a marionette whose strings has been severed, saw the lifeless green eyes that stared up into nothing. He heard the vicious roar of triumph from the other side.
“No!” he screamed, thrashing in Weasley’s arms, fighting to get away, fighting to get to Harry. “No, no….” And then he was falling through space with the sure conviction that his life was no longer worth living…
“No,” Draco Malfoy murmured, head moving restlessly on the fine white linen pillowcase. “No, no…”
With a pained gasp, he jerked awake and lurched up, heart pounding beneath his ribs, skin covered with cold sweat that plastered his silk pajamas to his lean body. Grey eyes wide, he stared around the sumptuous suite, throat tight, tears slipping unheeded down cheeks flushed dark red. One elegant hand pressed over his galloping heart and the other went to his thigh, rubbing the knotted ridge of scar tissue with its dull, ever present ache. And as his tortured mind realized where he was, and that it had been just a dream, a nightmare, that he wasn’t actually living it again, he flopped back against his sweat dampened pillows and covered his face with his trembling hands. One would think, after nineteen years, that it wouldn’t still have the power to destroy him. But it did, oh, it still did.
God, he hated Anniversaries.
After a long soak in the sunken marble tub in his en-suite bath and a rub down with some ointment that he himself had brewed to deal with the lingering affects of his injury, he was barely limping by the time he made it down the grand staircase and into the vast entrance hall of Malfoy Manor. He’d taken time with his appearance that morning, smoothing back the short trimmed white-blond hair in the style he’d long preferred, wearing a tailored Armani suit, dark grey shirt and black silk tie. He had no intention of following wizard tradition and wearing his hair long; he’d do anything in his power to differentiate himself from his father in the minds of others, even if it meant putting his slightly receding hairline on display and wearing Muggle clothing. In fact, he’d not worn wizard’s robes since he’d been forced to retire from the Auror Division, nineteen years before. Nineteen years to the day.
He pushed the thought from him, fixing a blank expression on his aristocratic face as he paused near the round marble table in the center of the cavernous entry and quickly scanned through the mail that had been left neatly stacked on a silver tray. There was nothing that required his immediate attention; it was mostly invites to social events he had no intention of attending and requests for funding for one charity or another. He’d let his mother sort through it, and answer what she felt he needed to. Laying the squares of parchment back on the table, he walked through the enormous formal dining room, then on into the breakfast room.
Morning sunlight streamed in through the vast bank of windows that lined one side of the large room, revealing a panoramic view of his mother’s opulent gardens. The lady herself was seated at one end of the long table, wearing a sky-blue satin dressing gown, her long hair in an elegant French twist up the back of her head. Her white-blonde hair was now actually more white than blonde and there were small lines at the corners of her clear blue eyes and bracketing her lovely mouth, but he thought her more beautiful than ever. A soft floral scent drifted to him as he brushed his lips over her cheek, and her fingers when she touched his cheek were soft and cool.
“Good morning, mother,” he murmured before taking his seat at her right.
“Good morning, darling,” she responded, and then frowned slightly when she turned to look at him. “Didn’t you sleep well?” He looked at her, one brow arched. “You’re pale, my love.”
He looked down at his plate as he laid his linen napkin over his lap. “My leg was bothering me some.”
“The new potion isn’t working?” she asked, her brow furrowing slightly. “You should talk to Healer Wetherby…”
“It’s fine,” he said gently but firmly, looking up and touching her hand. She subsided, but sighed softly.
“You needn’t merely suffer in silence, darling,” she said carefully. “That’s all I’m saying.”
He began to respond when the warm atmosphere of the room was disturbed by a clear, cutting voice.
“Oh, but suffering in silence is simply how it’s done for martyr's, mother dear.”
Draco’s lips tightened into a flat line, and Narcissa glanced up at the owner of the voice in irritation.
Astoria Greengrass-Malfoy entered the sunny room wearing a deep red riding habit, her sleek black hair twisted in a style very like her mother-in-law’s. She was an exquisitely beautiful woman, her figure slender and willowy, her skin fashionably pale, but the hardness around her mouth and the cunning expression in her brown eyes spoiled the effect. Her knee high black riding boots clicked on the parquet floor as she walked, and she was holding a riding crop in one hand. She slid languidly into the chair directly across from her husband and gave him a flinty smile.
“I’m somewhat surprised to see you this morning, dearest,” she said, one black brow arching, eyes bright with malicious amusement.
“I can’t imagine why,” Draco answered tightly. “I’ve meetings at the office all morning.”
“Well, I’m quite certain that everyone would understand if you simply found it too difficult to leave your rooms today.” Draco sent her a warning look across the table, but Astoria merely smiled slowly.
“Whatever are you on about?” Narcissa asked in irritation. As if just waiting for the opportunity, Astoria presented a newspaper, which she’d been holding rolled in her other hand. She let it drop to the table-top and it fell open to the front page. The Headline across the top screamed ‘Nineteen Years Later’ in bold print, and beneath it was a picture, a wizard photo, of a handsome man in his late twenties with messy black hair, wide eyes behind simple spectacles and a shy, self-effacing smile. The print under the photo read; ‘Marking the Anniversary of the tragic death of Harry Potter’. Draco stared at it, and felt his throat slowly closing.
“Such a sad story, really,” Astoria said tightly as she watched her husbands already pale face loose what little color it had. “So young, so handsome. His whole life a head of him, with his pretty little wife and their three beautiful children.”
“I… find that I’m not hungry,” Draco said as calmly as he could with this throat tightening, pushing back his chair and standing abruptly. “I’ll get something later in town.” He didn’t even glance at his wife, and didn’t see the vengeful satisfaction on her face.
Narcissa reached out and grasped his hand. “Draco, please,” she said softly. He didn’t even look into the blue eyes; all he could think of now was escaping the suddenly stultifying atmosphere of the sunny room, and the wizard photo of the handsome face that smiled slowly, over and over again.
He squeezed the cool hand, and left without another word, the sound of his Italian boots clicking in an unnatural rhythm as his limp returned. He crossed to the door of the dining room and left without looking back.
Draco walked along Diagon Alley on his way to the offices of the Malfoy Conglomerate, ignoring the quick looks and whispers that were sent his way. He was used to the attention, so much so that he now discounted it completely. He pulled the black leather over coat closed against the chill wind, but even so tendrils of it seemed to creep up under his pant leg, and his gait grew more and more stiff as his thigh muscles tightened. His soft grey cashmere scarf brushed his chin, and he could catch just a hint of fragrance rising from the softly woven strands of wool; it was fragrance he’d put there himself, fragrance from a bottle he secreted in the back of his wardrobe, which he used sparingly, dabbing just a bit onto an article of clothing that he knew would be near his face. It was his scent, the one he’d worn so long ago, and Draco hoarded each precious drop and when it was gone, he made the trip to Harrod’s in Muggle London in order to buy another small bottle. It wasn’t particularly expensive and it wasn’t a designer brand, but each whiff of the woodsy fragrance seemed to settle Draco, reminded him that once he had loved and been loved, and he took his comforts where he could find them.
He greeted the doorman at the entrance to his building with a quick nod, which the man in his formal green livery solemnly returned and then held the door open for him. Draco entered and was immediately engulfed in warmth from the large fireplaces along the far wall, the scent of the dark leather furniture, and the ambiance of the dark wood paneled walls. The intent had been to create an atmosphere of wealth and permanence, and Draco knew that they had succeeded.
“Good morning, Mr. Malfoy,” several people murmured as he passed, and Draco nodded to them politely, acknowledging their greetings with a slight angling of his head. He approached his private lift to the penthouse offices and pressed the button, waiting patiently, his back to the room. When the doors slid silently open, he entered it and turned as the doors closed, grateful for that moment not to be under anyone’s scrutiny. He knew that as the President and CEO of the vast Conglomerate, his presence was of immediate interest to everyone in the building; he was their boss, after all. But there were times, especially when he was feeling a bit shaky, that he found the constant press of attention wearying. When the doors of the lift slid open to reveal the reception area outside of his own office, he steeled himself to be watched yet again as he crossed the hunter green carpeting that led to his assistant’s desk just outside of his offices doors.
“Good Morning, Harper,” he said softly, greeting the young man who had been his assistant for nearly four years. Hamilton Harper had graduated from Hogwarts at the top in his years Ravenclaw class, and had come to be invaluable.
“Good Morning, sir,” he answered politely, standing immediately and handing Draco a stack of correspondence and memos that had been sitting near his right elbow, pre-sorted and waiting for him to arrive. He knew that the things that didn’t need his attention had already been efficiently dealt with, and that what he was being handed was what his assistant had deemed important. He saw a copy of the Daily Prophet neatly folded on the bottom of the stack, and closed his eyes for a moment before shifting it from beneath the pile and slipping it into his other hand, holding it out.
“I won’t be requiring the paper today, Harper,” Draco said, fighting to keep his voice from sounding stiff but not managing. It was a sign of how professional Harper was that he merely nodded and took the paper from the outstretched hand without comment. Draco took the morning paper every day, at least to check the business pages and to see how their stocks were fairing on the Wizards Exchange; for him to refuse it was a true change of routine. The fact that Harper merely nodded politely was re-enforcement of Draco’s high opinion of him.
“Shall I check the stocks and see if there is anything of interest in the business pages, sir?” he asked mildly. Draco nodded, not sure he’d been able to hide his relief.
“That would be excellent,” he answered.
“Your tea is already inside, sir.” Harper moved ahead of him and put his hand on the elaborate brass doorknob. “And your son stopped by a few minutes ago. He said he’d like a few minutes this morning, if you can spare them.”
“I can always spare a few minutes for Scorpius,” Draco answered, his mouth softening slightly at the corners. “Tell him to come up at his convenience.”
“Yes, sir.”
Draco entered his ‘inner sanctum’ and heard the door close at his back with a soft sigh of relief. Here, in this room that he’d designed himself, he was protected from the searching eyes of others and the expectations of his staff. He unbuttoned and slipped out of the over coat, hanging it on a coat tree just inside of the massive doors, and began to remove the scarf, but thought better of it and left it draped around his throat. Crossing over the thick carpeting, he approached the two large leather arm chairs that faced a black marble fireplace, a fire burning cheerfully within the grate, a low occasional table with a full tea service between the two elegant chairs. He sat in the one on the right and watched as the service sprang to life, the pot lifting, pouring a stream of the steaming rich brown liquid into a delicate bone china cup, two cubes lifting from a small sugar bowl to drop into the tea. A slender silver spoon lifted of its own volition and stirred the sugar until it was dissolved, and then a thin sliver of lemon lifted from another plate, drifting down to float softly on the surface of the hot beverage. Draco watched the process idly, thinking perhaps it was time for Harper to have another pay increase. The man was invaluable.
Draco finished his tea, and the moment he laid his cup in the saucer, the entirety of the service disappeared. He retrieved the stack of correspondence he’d yet to look at and crossed to his desk, taking a seat behind it, laying the mail on the blotter and was about to reach for the memo on the top when his eyes fell on his center desk drawer, and lingered. Anyone watching would have seen the way his usually light eyes clouded, the way his lips dipped down slightly at the corners. He paused in the motion of reaching towards the mail and his hand dropped to open the drawer instead.
The contents were organized in an almost painfully neat manner. Quills to the left, parchment neatly stacked at the center, the Malfoy Conglomerate logo embossed in the center near the bottom. There was a sharpened knife to the left for trimming his quills, and several glass bottles of ink in assorted colors lined neatly next to the parchment. But Draco ignored all of this. His eyes went immediately to a small hook on the far right side of the drawer from which dangled a very small golden key. His hand trembled only slightly when he reached for it, and it felt cool in his fingers.
He closed the middle drawer with a nearly silent slide and turned his head, glancing beneath it and to the left near his knee. If one did not know where to search, the small lock was all but undetectable; the gold face plate was such a near match for the golden oak wood that it performed a sort of unintentional camouflage. But Draco did know where to look, and he reached forward and fitted the tiny key in the lock and turned it. There was a short pause and then a decisive ‘click’, and a door, no more than five inches square, popped open. Draco slipped his fingers inside and felt around until he encountered what he’d known was secreted there; a thick square of parchment. Swallowing heavily, he withdrew it and held it in his hands.
It was smudged around the square edges, age and nearly two decades of finger prints staining the once ivory parchment a dirty yellowish beige. The edges were particularly dirty, the result of it being handled, folded and unfolded literally hundreds of times. At first, Draco had looked at it nearly every day; now, there were four or five times a year when he took it from its hiding place and held it in his hands. He opened it each Christmas Eve and even knowing that it was sentimentality at its worst, each Valentine’s Day. He opened it on his birthday, June the fifth, and on July thirty first. And he opened it on May fifth. Every year on May the fifth, as soon as he finished his tea, he opened this letter; it marked the day that it had all ended, the day that everything had changed. As he held the parchment in his hands, he closed his eyes, and he allowed himself to remember…
The first time he’d ever seen the letter had been May the seventh, two thousand and nine. He was just one month shy of his twenty-ninth birthday and he’d been in the intensive care unit at St. Mungo’s for nearly forty-eight hours. The hex that had sliced his thigh muscle to the bone had been a particularly dark one and the healers had been having a terrible time controlling the bleeding and regenerating the tissue. They’d been giving him strong pain and sleeping potions, because the pain in his leg was enormous, but nothing compared to the pain that was lacerating his heart. When he was awake he could only stare comatose at the ceiling, remembering the flash of green, the swirl of black wool as he fell, the staring, unseeing green eyes that he’d glimpsed for just a moment. But sleep was almost worse, for in his drug altered dreams he managed to get to Harry in time, to pull him to safety, and it was so much more painful when he awoke and knew that this time, sleep was the respite and reality the nightmare.
He’d been drifting in that drug induced haze and had been wakened by the fierce pounding pain radiating from his thigh into his hip. He had reached for the bell pull that summoned the nurse when he realized that he was not in his room alone. There was someone seated by his bed and it wasn’t his mother, who had kept a near constant vigil, or his wife, who at that point, much to her future embarrassment, was still in love with him. No, seated in the stiff white hospital chair, brown eyes deadened and cheeks hollowed by grief and lack of sleep, was the last person Draco had ever expected to turn up in his hospital room. Her brilliant auburn hair was pulled back from her face and her slender, almost coltish body was swathed in a truly unfortunate black polyester pantsuit, but the face he found himself looking into was unmistakably that of Ginevra Weasley-Potter. She was staring at him, pale hands white-knuckled on the black bag in her lap, freckles standing out in bold relief against nearly colorless skin. They stared at each other for a tense moment, Draco’s eyes wide and his heart in his throat, her face all but expressionless, save for the lines of pain around her eyes and her mouth.
“They tell me that you’ll probably be at least partially crippled,” she said finally, her voice flat. “I would tell you that I’m sorry, but I’m not.”
He swallowed heavily, his mouth made dry by not just the drugs in his system but by nerves as well. “I suppose you’re entitled to that,” he managed in a voice hoarse from disuse. He’d not said five words in the two days he’d been there.
She continued to stare for a long time, then looked down into her lap and snapped open the inexpensive black bag. He watched, half expecting her to withdraw her wand and hex him to hell, almost wishing that she would. Instead, she withdrew a square of white parchment. She held in for a moment, then, after briefly closing her eyes as if gathering her strength she laid it on the bed near his hand. “That’s actually more for you than it was for me,” she said tightly. “I don’t ever want to see it again.” She stood then and walked to the door, and her bright hair looked like a skein of satin ribbon against the austere darkness of her jacket. She paused again once her hand is on the doorknob. “Don’t for one moment think that I’m doing this out of kindness,” she said without looking back, her voice devoid of emotion. “I’m doing this because I know that what’s in that letter will tear you apart, and I want you to hurt as much as I do.” With those chilling words, she left the room. Draco could hear her heals clicking through the door as she walked away down the hall.
He’d stared at the square of parchment for a long time before picking it up, his hand trembling. When he turned it over and saw the writing on the other side, he winced reflexively. In Harry’s messy, hurried writing was one word; Ginny. Just seeing it made something in Draco’s chest begin to ache.
He almost hadn’t opened it. There had been times when he’d wished that he hadn’t. But as he sat in his opulent office nineteen years later he knew he’d never have been able to rest if he hadn’t read it. His hands were trembling again as he opened it now; he didn’t know why this year was so much harder than the others had been, but it was. For some reason the hurt felt new again, and raw, and when he looked down onto the page with its messy lines of equally messy writing, his throat was already beginning to feel tight.
“Gin,” it began.
“I know that you’re angry with me, and I suppose I understand. If our situation were reversed, I’d be plenty hacked off, too. And I know that angry doesn’t really begin to cover it. I know that you feel hurt, and betrayed, and… disappointed, and all I can say in response to that is: I know. I know, and I’m sorry.
“The words probably sound pretty hollow; just know that I mean them. I never meant for this to happen. I know that every man who’s ever cheated on his wife has said the same thing, but for me, it’s really true. I love you, Ginny.”
Draco swallowed hard there. That line was never easy for him to read.
“I love you, and I adore the kids, and I never meant to hurt any of you. Part of me wishes that this had never happened, that we could go back to being what we were, feeling what we felt when we were kids. But I know that can’t be, not now. Not anymore.
“I never meant to fall in love with someone other than you. My life was set; I had my job, and you, and the kids, and I thought that was what I wanted. But I can't lie to you, Gin, and I won't lie to myself any more. It wasn’t enough and it hadn’t been for a very long time. I think I ignored it because I didn’t want to face it, didn’t want for there to be one more thing about me that was… different, and weird. There had already been so much. And I grew up listening to my Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia, going on about the ‘unnatural freaks’ on the telly, and I was already that to them. I didn’t need to add… And then there was Dudley. He’d called me queer almost from the moment I was old enough to understand; I couldn’t give him the satisfaction of knowing that it might be true. I didn’t want it to be true. I wanted to be… normal, I guess, just in this one thing.
“But I’ve learned something, Gin. I’ve learned that you can’t pretend to be something that you aren’t. That eventually, it catches up with you. That you are what you are, and the longer you go on trying to ignore it, the more miserable you become. I’ve been miserable for a long time. And if you’ll be honest with yourself, you have been, too.
“Please don’t blame Draco for this. I know that temper of yours, but this isn’t his fault. It isn’t his fault that I fell in love with him. It isn’t his fault that I can’t imagine my life without him. And it isn’t his fault that I need him, like I need air, and water, and food. So, hate me, if it makes you feel better, but understand that I pursued him, that I started this, and that I can only hope that I mean half as much to him as he means to me….”
"I need him, Ginny, and I refuse to go on pretending that I don’t."
He never did get much further than that. That was the point at which he’d find himself blinded by tears and be unable to go on. Ginevra Weasley had known just exactly what she was doing by giving him that letter; it was like a knife to the heart every time. And five times a year, he opened it, and read it, and the wounds were opened all over again.
He swallowed heavily, carefully refolding the parchment, but he didn’t lean forward to put it away as quickly as he usually did. He held it, knowing that this was the last thing that Harry had ever written, because it was just the next day…
The magical intercom on his desk sounded with a soft bell-tone, and Draco put the letter on his thigh and then quickly dashed at the dampness on his cheeks before leaning forward to press a brass button on the top. An image of Hamilton slowly manifested above the small wooden box, face a carefully professional mask.
“Yes, Harper,” he said, striving to make his voice sound as normal as possible. Instead, it came out sounding a bit clipped, and the visage of his assistant blinked.
“So sorry to intrude, sir,” he said quickly. Draco sighed silently and clenched his fists for a moment on his slender thighs. The parchment pressed into his right wrist.
“You aren’t intruding,” he said, intentionally softening his voice. “What did you want?”
“Your son is here to see you, sir.”
Draco nodded. “Send him in.”
The image of Harper nodded and faded away.