Draco and the Old Man

Two

Draco kneeled next to his wife's bedside. Her pale sunken eyes looked to her husband and a slow smile seemed onto her dry, cracked lips. Astoria Malfoy reached her pale boy hand to Draco's and brought it to her face. She gave the closest thing that she could to a hug, a very weak squeezed. Her whole body tensed for a moment before it all relaxed.

"How's our baby boy?" she wheezed.

"He's not so much a baby anymore." Draco laughed softly. "Last I saw, I sent him to do his schoolwork."

"And you're father?"

Draco was quiet a moment. "I sent him away."

"You did?" Astoria asked "Why?"

"He was saying those things about our boy again." Draco mumbled "I couldn't let him any longer."

"I'm glad. He's just been vile recently, hasn't he."

"Yeah." The silence hung a moment.

"Draco? Do you remember how we met?"

"However could I forget? As much as I wish I could."

"No, I mean, when we met the second time. As adults." Astoria clarified. Draco didn't say anything but instead brought her hands to his lips and pressed a kiss into them.

He did think to the event though.

"Don't return to that." Astoria added.

***

The rain was coming down in buckets around the almost deserted Malfoy Manor. Its only inhabitant was the young man named Draco Malfoy. His parents had left him there alone. They had abandoned the place after Draco had had a meltdown and became dreadfully violent.

When the door bell rang not a week later, Draco was more than ready to yell and turn the intruder away. When he opened the door, he paused a moment. It was a girl he had gone to school with, she had been a year under him. Her name was Astoria Greengrass.

"Dreadfully sorry to intrude." her voice was very breathy and slightly breathy. "But it's raining real hard. Any chance you could let me wait out the storm inside?"

Against his better judgement, Draco stepped aside and out of the doorway and let Astoria enter the Manor. Water fell into a pulled underneath her as she tore her freezing wet jacket from her body.

Draco moved into the next room and towards the fireplace and wordlessly made a fire with his wand inside it. "Move over here." he called to Astoria in the other room.

"I seem to have misplaced my wand." she came in, still dripping. "Any chance you could dry me off?" Draco did so, again, wordlessly. "I really thank you for doing this."

"Yeah." Draco grunted. "No problem." he said nothing more.

"Do you perhaps have so,e tea you could spare?" Astoria sat herself in the armchair closest to the fire.

Having cast out all the houselves, Draco went to make the tea himself. He boiled the kettle with his wand and got out the teacups by hand. he debated making a pot before deciding against it. He got out two tea bags and placed them in each cup. He poured the water into them and added a special touch of firewhiskey to his own.

He brought them out to Astoria on a silver tray. He set the tray down and turn his back for a moment to summon the forgotten milk and sugar. When he turned back, he discovered that Astoria took her tea black. She had already taken one of the cups and taken a sip. She made a face at the taste.

"Do you make it a habit to put whiskey in your tea, Mr. Malfoy?" she coughed lightly.

"Sorry," he mumbled "this one was meant for you." he handed her the other cup.

"I can tell." she pursed her lips and gave the spiked tea to Draco's shaking hand. "I guess I'll take the habit question as a yes."

"Not always." he weakly defended himself. "Just... recently."

"Yeah." Astoria muttered.

Draco left the room and mounted the stairs to his room. He collapsed in his childhood bed and sighed. He rolled to his side and rooted around his bedside table until he found what he was looking for, his flask. He brought the metal bottle to his lips and drank the flask dry. The firewhiskey burned his throat on the way down.

He used his wand to summon the bottle from the kitchen, but it turned out he had already drained that too. He tried summoning another bottle. Again it was empty. He knew he had a full one somewhere. He tried once more, with luck this time. A half bottle came to his hand and her finished it off within only a minute. He passed out drunk not long after.

The next morning, he awoke to an awful headache. He slowly made his way to the kitchen to root fir another bottle,but when he arrived, the smell of eggs and bacon wafted to his nose. He immediately forced back the feeling of vomit. A plate of said foods were laid out for him presumably, but he ignored it. He opened a couple cupboards but they turned up empty for any booze. Odder still to him, Draco didn't even see any empty bottles even if he knew there ought to be plenty.

The urge to hurl returned again. Draco ran to the sink and bet over it. It left really quickly once he got there though. The smell of whiskey wafted from the drain very strongly. He sniffed it. It was unmistakably whiskey. Draco was sure of it.

He stormed out of the kitchen and into the sitting room. Astoria was sitting there reading the newspaper.

"What did you do?" Draco demanded.

"Me?" Astoria played innocent. "I made you breakfast."

"My whiskey." Draco spat.

"Oh, that. Yeah, I poured that down the drain." Astoria kept her eyes on the paper. "You don't need it."

"To hell I don't!"

"No, you really don't need the whiskey, and I'm going to make sure you can see that too."

"Get out." Draco hissed.

Astoria stood and grabbed her coat. "I'll be back tomorrow to pour out any whiskey you buy today." she said "Thanks for letting me stay."

Again against his better judgement, the next day Draco let her in again. Same with the day after. And the day after. And everyday day after that until one day she didn't show up.

A/N: To be honest, I kinda forget whats going on because i wrote this a couple weeks ago... -J.C