The Road Not Yet Taken

***i do not own harry potter. the plot ideas in this story however, are all mine.***


Review please-this is my first story. All of the chapters posted so far were written before the sixth book came out. The Draco/Hermione romance has not been introduced yet. This is just for the background.


Prologue:

He watched his mother pour another glass of fire whiskey. Her slumped figure was hidden in the shadows of the enormous kitchen. This was a familiar haunt for her. It seemed as though her only comfort lay at the bottom of a bottle.

It had been nine months since the Malfoy family had been ripped apart. Draco stood unnoticed in the doorway, leaning against the frame, waiting. It was like this every night. His mother would slip to the kitchens, sit at the scrubbed wooden table, and drink herself to sleep. Every night he would wait for her, standing far enough away for her to down cup after cup until her body would break.

Narcissa picked up the bottle in her shaking hands. It seemed to take every ounce of energy she possessed to lift the bottle to the slimy rim of her cup and refill it with the poisonous nectar. It slipped from her clammy fingers and onto the stone floor, shattering, the smoking liquid seeping into the chilly rock. She didn’t seem to have noticed, her eyes were glazed with unshed tears, threatening to cascade down the pallid skin stretched across her face.

His mother was a ghost. She did not speak to him anymore, not since Lucius had been taken away. She did not speak to anyone. It was too painful for her to be reminded of a life that had been reduced to nothing. Draco spent his days shadowing his wretched mother, picking up the trails of empty bottles in her wake. It was only a matter of time before she would waste away in her own sorrow. Draco knew it, but his heart was numb. It was beyond the expectation of the Malfoy name to keep one’s feelings hidden. He could not feel because if he did, it would kill him.

With a tiny sob, Narcissa slumped over onto the table. Draco waited until her eyes slid shut and moved into the dark room to carry her away. His feet crunched over the broken glass littering the ground. He knew the noise would not wake her, she was too far gone to be shaken from her slumber.

Draco wrapped his arms around his mother’s gaunt figure. He picked her up with ease. She was light, nearly the weight of a child. She had stopped eating when Lucius left. He had been Narcissa’s life. Though brutal and cold, she loved him. She died the day he was taken. Death eater or no, Lucius was what she had lived for. Draco was an all too familiar reminder of her lost love. His sleek blonde hair and icy blue eyes were identical to those of his father. Narcissa could not look at him. He could not even look at himself.

With no trouble, Draco carried his mother up the winding staircase of the manor, pausing only to push her bedroom door open with his foot. He laid her on the large wooden bed that dominated the large room.

Draco stood back to watch her. She looked pathetic laying alone in the huge bed. It’s large, dark posts reached toward the high ceiling, dwarfing her emaciated form. The green silken sheets reflected the moonlight pouring in from the large window on the wall. Narcissa looked positively corpse-like in the eerie gleam, her white blonde hair cascading around her head like shroud. It was nauseating.

He leaned over the bed and laid a soft kiss on her pouted lips.

“Goodbye Mother,” he whispered, pulling his thin black wand from inside his robes. “AVADA KADAVRA!”

And there she lay, her ghostly corpse encased in the moonshine, alone at last.