Draco Malfoy sat alone in his room looking out the window. The hedges and lawns of the vast estate were slowly darkening under the falling sunlight. He sighed. He knew it was the day he would normally have returned home on the Hogwarts Express; the day his father and mother would have been waiting for him as he left the train. But he also knew those days were but a memory. The last week had passed in a fog for the young man. He'd wake long after his mother had already left the house leaving him to manage on his own.
He hadn't left his room much because every room in the manor brought back memories of his father. A father, who if the healers were to be believed would never leave the bed he now laid in. The previous day Draco had walked past his father's study and could almost hear a quill scratching on parchment. A sound that had been common in years previous. He'd entered the study that time, something he never had done without permission. Permission though was something never to come from his father again. He knew he'd never be able to sit in the chair beside his father's desk while his father spoke of a magical world that would one day be rid of the filth of muggle blood or complain about another pureblood family whose offspring had contaminated their blood with that of a muggle or muggleborn. Draco knew he'd never receive another lesson on his heritage and proper history of the magical world.
A history that was denied those of non-pureblood birth, one that showed why magical purebloods were superior in all ways to those who were inferior.
As the light from the window lessened even further, the candles over his desk lit magically. It caused Draco's eyes to look that way. On the desk were his schoolbooks and copies of the Daily Prophet. That only made the hurt Draco felt in his heart even worse. As his father lay in a bed in St. Mungo's, Harry Potter was on the front page of the Prophet nearly every day. A parchment also laid on the desk, it had been there since the first day he'd been home. It was crumpled now, unreadable. A week ago it had been filled with two names and other words. When his anger at his mother had subsided, he'd remembered Potter's 'suggestion'.
He'd written out the names and as he realized they were anagrams he'd at first believed what Potter had said and he'd tried to figure out why the Golden Boy would do such a thing and what he'd gain from it. As he thought it over, the answer came to him, hence the crumpled parchment. He realized Potter had tried to trick him, to use him against his own father. He realized Potter had reversed the anagram himself. He'd created a fictitious name from Lord Voldemort in an attempt to deceive Draco. During the week that followed Draco's frustration and anger had slowly built its way up. With no outlet for it, it started to consume him.
Lost in thought, Draco never heard the ringing of the entry bell but shortly voices drifted up the stairs and into his room. At first he'd paid them no mind as his mother had often entertained in the days of years past, but it wasn't long before he realized it was an unfamiliar voice his mother chatted with. Curiosity finally got the best of him and he rose from his chair and descended the steps. The voices grew louder as he made his way to his mother's lounge. When he looked in the door he stopped when he saw who it was.
"But...she's dead," Was his first thoughts as he saw the dark haired woman sitting across from his mother. His movement must have caught his mother's eye as she turned toward the door.
"Draco, come in. This is my sister Andromeda."
"Not Bellatrix," He thought, but then he remembered who Andromeda was and what his father had thought of her. Of what even her own mother had thought of her.
"You invited a blood traitor into our home?" Draco snarled as the anger he'd had built up in the last week fought to get out. A blood traitor invited into the halls of his father while he laid in a bed a St. Mungo's; Draco could only see it as the ultimate betrayal of his father.
"Draco, this is my sister," Narcissa said sharply. "You will not speak like that."
"'SHE'S A BLOOD TRAITOR!" Draco shouted. "FATHER WOULD HAVE NEVER LET THE LIKES OF HER IN THIS HOUSE."
"Maybe I should leave," Andromeda said cautiously as she sat the cup of tea she'd been drinking down and rose from her chair.
Narcissa put out her hand to in a gesture for Andromeda to stay and turned back to her son. "Draco, I am your mother. You will not..." she didn't get to finish as Draco had turned his back on her and stormed out of the room.
"I'm sorry Cissy," Andromeda said. "I really shouldn't have come."
"It's fine," Narcissa replied as she continued to look at the door her son disappeared from wondering what had happened. "He'll calm down and I'll talk to him tomorrow. He just doesn't understand."
But she didn't talk to him the next day. She went back to St. Mungo's the next morning and spent the day next to her husband. Once again Andromeda was there in the evening. By the time she arrived home it was late and she wasn't surprised that her son didn't greet her. The next day she went to speak to him only to find him not in his room. Again she wasn't surprised since she presumed he was out on the grounds somewhere. It was very late that night that she realized that he had never returned. By the next morning she was certain that her son was not there.
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