Chapters 201-210

Cry of a White Peacock

The funeral took place at Malfoy Manor.

At the back of the park, between giant cedars and weeping willows, framed by orderly arrangements of yew bushes, stood a row of mausoleums. They were all built of white marble flecked with silvery veins. But most of the crypts were grey with age. Out of the corners of her eyes Hermione thought that she spotted cracks in façades of the older tombs. The angels that adorned them slumped drunkenly against their columns. Lichens and mosses clung to the crevices of their carefully carved locks.

But Draco’s tomb was new. It blazed in the icy January sunshine. To its left and to its right new yew trees had been planted. They looked as scrawny and out of place as the crypt they framed.

Hermione gripped Severus’ arm harder. Her heart was beating too quickly and she felt strangely short of breath ever since they had passed the wrought iron gates and started walking up the drive towards the manor house. Turning left instead of continuing towards it had granted her some relief, but faced with the row of the mausoleums, the palpitations increased again, making her knees feel weak and her stomach queasy.

Severus did not look at her, but he put an arm around her underneath her cloak, pulling her closer to his side. He knew what had happened the last time she’d had the pleasure to visit Malfoy Manor.

In fact, he’d suggested that she stay home—no one expected her to attend the funeral, after all. Only very few people would attend the funeral at all. If she went or not would go unnoticed and unremarked upon.

But she would hear none of it. Draco had become a friend.

She’d missed the funerals of her friends after the war, because she lay unconscious in a darkened room at St. Mungo’s fighting the poison of Severus’ blood and Nagini’s venom. Today she was healthy and strong, so where else would she be but here, bidding her friend goodbye?

Severus had scowled at her, but he hadn’t argued.

Thus, they were here, along with a small group of relatives, friends and enemies that had come to see Draco off.

oooOooo

‘Lucius, Narcissa—’ Severus indicated the hint of a bow. ‘I am truly sorry for your loss.’ For a moment it seemed as if he wanted to add something. But then he just shook his head ever so slightly and dropped his gaze. It was too late for words.

Hermione clung to his arm. ‘I—I—am—My condolences, Mr. and Mrs. Malfoy,’ she stuttered.

Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy had changed.

Had they always been so small?

Though small was perhaps not the right word; they were both tall. But today both of them stood bowed and bent, their shoulders slumping under a weight they couldn’t begin to carry. Narcissa’s hair had faded to a dirty off-white, that unfortunate colour old, blond hair sometimes acquires before turning truly white with age. Lucius appeared brittle and broken. His cane was no longer a toy of amour propre, but a necessary support.

‘He was a friend,’ Hermione whispered. ‘I’m really sorry.’

Lucius looked at her then for the first time. He did not say anything, but his pale eyes blinked repeatedly, watery in the cool winter-sun.

oooOooo

Andromeda held the funerary speech, while Teddy squirmed in her arms. She spoke of a gifted young man who had repented the mistakes of his past and had been looking to a golden future as an upstanding citizen of the wizarding world. Of a nephew she’d been hoping to be proud of. Of a ministry employee who’d done his best to get his job done.

Little Teddy fidgeted in her arms, his hair changing from black to silver to blond. Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy huddled arm in arm in the shadow of the mausoleum. On the other side of the table where Draco’s body was laid out, a rare ray of sunlight bathed Hannah Abbott’s pale face in golden light, emphasizing her red-rimmed, swollen eyes. And Hermione stood in a daze.

She tried to remember Draco the way the Minister of Magic described him.

But she couldn’t.

She remembered his pinched, pale face, the way his eyes narrowed when he was about to say something especially spiteful, years before, when they were still at Hogwarts and knew nothing of the war. The painful way her fist had connected with his jaw that one time near Hagrid’s hut.

The way he’d changed in the last years.

Hermione couldn’t quite pinpoint the change. It was everything and nothing, just as it was with Harry, who was now walking up to Andromeda to stand beside her behind the table where Draco lay dead and forever silent under the green shroud of velvet lined with silver.

She stared at the slim silhouette under the cloth. It didn’t seem possible that Draco’s body could be lying there. True, he’d been slender. But he’d been tall, too, and energetic, full of life.

It just didn’t seem possible that he was really lying there, that thin, frail shape hidden by the funerary shroud.

When Harry cleared his throat, a mournful cry cut off his words.

All eyes turned to the right of the tomb, where a white peacock appeared. In carefully considered steps the bird ambled forwards, then hesitated, straightened his long neck and crooned.

‘Meeeow, meeow,’ the white peacock cried. ‘Meeow!’

oooOooo

Later Hermione couldn’t remember a word of Harry’s speech. But the meowing cries of the peacock echoed in her ears. And whenever she closed her eyes, she saw the white flames springing up from the green cloth that covered Draco’s body.

She curled up at Severus’ side and buried her face in his familiar, comforting scentand listened to the soothing rhythm of his heart.

‘Poor Hannah,’ she murmured. ‘Poor Draco.’

But what she really thought was: I’d never survive if it was you under that shroud. If I was left and you were gone.