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It had been a mistake. It had been the right thing to do but it was still a mistake. It was a choice that
had left him alone in this great big gloomy house. It wasn't even his, really, not as much as home would have been.
Except home had been destroyed. It was Father's own fault really, if he would let the Dark Lord use the house as a headquarters.
Then again, this had been the other side's HQ and nothing had happened to it. But Potter's lot had won, the Dark Lord
had never found it and, of course, the last battle hadn't been fought there.
That part had been Draco's fault.
It
was his only option as he'd seen it. It was getting obvious that the Dark Lord was mad. And that the rest of them
were almost as mad as he was. Draco had had no option but to tell Potter both where the Death Eaters were and how to
get past the wards.
There were times that he regretted it. Those times were many, because he liked his home
and he didn't much like this place. But it was his now. He felt it only fair; if Potter destroyed his home it
was only fair that Potter produced a home in recompense. Admittedly that was accidental, Potter couldn't have expected
to die or else he would have made an actual will and the house wouldn't have ended up entailed to Draco as the eldest male
of Black blood. Not that Draco really minded and the house seemed to like him. The portrait of the woman he later
learned was his Great Aunt positively hummed when he arrived; crooning about how nice it was to have a real pureblood in the
house not like her dirty, dirty son and his filthy mudblood friends.
She started screaming, in a manner that Draco
came to expect, when Granger came to visit to question, no, what was her word? Ah yes, she came to debrief him.
Draco thought the portrait picked up on how little he wanted Granger in the house because her words changed, all about how
this filthy mudblood was dirtying the house, how Draco didn't want her here, how brave Draco was and how cowardly everyone
else had been. It was comforting, in its own strange way, here was someone who understood Draco, understood what he
had overcome. Of course the portrait might have been a little biased but then again who wasn't.
Draco had been written out of the official story already, merely a Death Eater who'd seen sense, rather than one of the
heroes of the war. Maybe that was how Snape had felt after the last war, never getting the credit he deserved, but then
again, who can trust and laud a traitor, he who betrays once can betray again. Draco knew that, no one would ever trust
him again. God knows no-one had trusted Snape. One of the things that annoyed the ever-precise Granger was exactly
who had cast the curse that killed Snape, at least three people on either side had claimed him as their victim, as well as
people posthumously claiming him for the Dark Lord or Potter's body count. That was one of the things she was pestering
him about when she questioned him, had he seen anything since he'd been near Snape at the time. Draco's personal belief
was that quite possibly everyone was right, if Snape had had six or seven curses cast at him at once that could explain why
he'd expired in quite such a bizarre way. Over the last few years Draco had seen his share of deaths, natural, unnatural
and otherwise, and Snape still managed to die in an utterly unique manner. He burst into a thousand tiny droplets of
blood. The inventiveness of it did suggest that it was one of the Death Eaters. It had ruined Draco's third best
set of robes, the other two went up with the house. A trip to Madame Malkin's was definitely required when he was released
from the house arrest he was under, and no matter what Granger said, it did amount to house arrest. She said it was
for his own good, so that people wouldn't suspect that he'd had anything to do with how Potter had got in. Draco was
pretty certain that they were just doing it to make sure that Potter got all the glory. As though that fool could have
gotten past all those wards. Plus, when he did finally turn up safe and well it wasn't as though people weren't going
to put two and two together anyway.
His father had rather quickly. They had seen Potter's army massing in the
distance but were reasonably unconcerned until there was a loud bang followed by lots of witches and wizards appearing in
the middle of the manor. His father knew of four people who had the passwords for the wards of the house and father
had been certain it wasn't himself, mother or the Dark Lord that had passed them on to Potter. Draco had only been saved
from a well-placed painful curse by a piece of falling masonary, and had spent the rest of the battle avoiding everyone.
Of
course, the painting didn't need to know that, but getting Granger to keep quiet when they were still within hearing range
of her was difficult, she didn't seem to understand why Draco wanted to stay on the right side of the last remaining member
of his family, however deranged and oil-based she was. There were things that Great Aunt Walburga didn't need to know
and any word of what had happened was one of them.
It was ridiculous that she was all the way out there in the corridor
anyway. Draco, one bored Sunday afternoon, decided that she should be moved to somewhere better. He decided the
living room would suffice.
Getting her off the wall proved impossible, until he explained what he was doing. Then
the explanation came, normally whenever anyone tried to move her it was to the dustbin not to another room. How had
Potter dared!
He did try to magic away the grime that had coated both the painting and the frame it was in. The
painting itself came away from that clean enough but the frame, nothing seemed to work on it. He ended up asking Granger
how she'd do it. She suggested a dust cloth and wood polish so he told her to buy him some. She looked like she
was going to object but since she didn't want him going out and about there wasn't any other way he could get hold of it.
When
she reappeared the next week she was good as her word and had brought some with her. He did ask half-heartedly if he
might be able to leave the house that week, but she said no. All Draco knew is that he was starting to suspect he'd
be stuck here permanently.
Instead of doing what he usually did when Granger left, he didn't bother to complain about
his continuing house arrest, he set to work trying to clean up the frame of Aunt Walburga's picture.
By the time Granger
came again, an hour late for her appointment, the frame was spotless, good as new. Under the layers of grime lay an
ornate golden frame, which he got the house-elf to spruce up until it shone with a golden glow that would have matched his
mother's hair. He ordered the house elf to make a cup of tea and started to move Granger towards the kitchen where they
could talk in privacy. But he couldn't help but feel a stirring of pride in his chest when his Great Aunt called him
the best of the Malfoys. What did his father know about family?
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