The Emptiness Behind Your Smile

Written for dark_fest (on LJ) for the prompt: "Harry Potter, post-war, the Slytherins have loved ones to mourn for too ". I'm a little ashamed for doing this to my favourite characters... but only little :) My heartfelt thanks to my wonderful betas cindas and celestineangel, whose invaluable suggestions have (hopefully) helped me improve this, at least some. All remaining errors are, as always, entirely my fault.


The Emptiness Behind Your Smile

"Betwixed birth and death, every breath regret
I pity the living, envy for the dead
Emotionally stunned, in defense, I'm numb
I'd rather not care than to be aware – be scared..."
Type O Negative: Anesthesia

"It's time." My voice breaks. I look into his eyes, wordlessly trying to say all that was left unsaid between us. Severus just nods and turns to go. Like in a nightmare, I open my mouth to call him back, but nothing comes out. I try to reach for him, to make him stay with me, but I am rooted to the spot. All I can do is watch him go. He walks around a corner and is gone. Forever. And he didn't turn back to look at me. Not once.

I jerk awake from the dream that has followed me since that last day. I never told Severus I loved him. Not once in all those years. I nearly jump out of my bed and get dressed as fast as I can. It is barely light, but I cannot stay still for another second. If I do, the black, raging abyss that opens in front of me will swallow me whole.

Yet another day, another set of pointless meetings to attend, another batch of donations to supervise. I need it, so that I don't have to remember what the war cost me, so that I do not become a phantom like my wife. It is lucky for me that there is so much work in rebuilding our world. I have become addicted to it. I work and work and work until I fall into my bed exhausted, able to have a few hours of hopefully dreamless sleep. Until the dream wakes me up and forces me to work some more.

We are Building a Better World for Future Children, they say. I huff at that, safely wrapped in my cold and arrogant façade. I let no one see how the irony of it hurts me. Future, indeed. I destroy my own future every day. My family needs me more than the stupid Ministry ever did, but I have nothing to give them. I just watch as Narcissa falls deeper and deeper into her silence. She mourns her sister, like I ought to mourn my lover. If I were half the husband I once thought I was, I would console her. I would hold her close and make her talk to me, and talk to her in my turn. Draco was right; I am a 'cold bastard who couldn't care less about anyone but myself and never did'.

Draco... He no longer talks to me. Not after I yelled at him. At the beginning he tried to do what I should have been doing. He tried to talk to us, to share his grief with us and make us share ours with him. To make us see what we still have and find comfort in it. Narcissa would just get up and exit the room but I... got angry. I yelled at him and now he no longer talks to me. No, I can't to think about Draco, either. It hurts, just like thinking about Severus hurts.

Narcissa hasn't slept in our bed since her sister died and a part of me has been glad of it. I want no one to see how bad my nights are. I have thought I have neither comfort to give nor any wish to receive any, but this morning, I am not so sure anymore. Narcissa is flesh and blood, warm, unlike the ghosts that plague my dreams. Suddenly I find myself wondering where Narcissa sleeps now, or whether she sleeps at all. Maybe she just sits in her chair in the library, staring into nothingness, all night as well as all day. An overwhelming need to find out grips me and forces me out of my room.

As I walk down the hall, I wonder when she has last eaten. Maybe I ought to bring her food and tuck her into a real bed. Maybe I can still make everything right. Maybe everything does not have to be lost. But first I must find her. The library seems the likeliest place to begin.

I know something is wrong the second I open the library door. The room is too quiet, too empty. Narcissa sits lumped in her chair, with a dark stain marring the carpet around her. Small streams of blood still trickle down the armrests, but her face is blank, white, lifeless. While I dreamed of my lost lover, my living wife has cut her wrists open. I have lost her, too. I have lost everything. For a moment, the world stops.

I find myself kneeling at her feet, oblivious to the blood that seeps through my robes, my face buried in her lap. From somewhere far away I hear sobbing, "I'm sorry, I'm so, so sorry." It takes a while before I realise that the noise comes from me. Finally, finally I am crying. It has been so long that for a blissful moment, I believe my tears will choke me, and I will join her in the ultimate consolation that is death.

But I can't. Not like this. For there is one final thing to see. One final horror to face. I wipe my eyes on my wife's bloodstained robe and get up. I almost trip on something. When I look down, I see a blood-stained knife. Narcissa's small, snake-shaped knife. A gift from her sister: how appropriate. I pick it up from where it has fallen from her lifeless hand and walk up the stairs to Draco's bedroom.

I crawl onto the bed where Draco lies, so pure and white and cold. Of course I know why he no longer talks to me. I only need to close my eyes to see the green flash of light. My past, my future, my entire life was destroyed in that one flash of madness. I carried him here in my arms, so many days ago that it is a miracle he is still so white. "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry," I whisper again, this time into my son's hair. The reality crashes down on me: I chose my dead lover over my living family. In my madness and denial, I destroyed the very thing Severus gave his life to protect. Because of me, he died in vain. I failed him, I failed Narcissa and most of all, I failed Draco. There is nothing for me to live for, no reason to avoid that raging abyss that awaits me.

I take Narcissa's knife and begin to cut the guilt and the pain away. I soil the sheets and Draco's pristine clothes and hair with my blood and my tears but for that, I cannot be sorry. Not when I know that when I am empty of both, it will be over. For all of us, the war will finally be truly over.