TW: grief, s**c*dal thoughts

Dark nebulae are clouds of interstellar dust so thick they block light from objects behind it such as stars or reflection nebulae. They are irregular and often take on serpentine shapes, obscuring brighter backgrounds such as the Milky Way.

─── · 。ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* :☆ﾟ. ───

I did not remember anything after that. I was only told.

The next time I opened my eyes, I was in my bed back at the manor. My parents loomed over me, told me I had been calling her name in my death-sleep.

Where is she? I had demanded to know.

My darling, the Dark Lord has lost the war. We have to lay low.

I had not cared about that. All I knew was that she was not by my side, and I wanted to see her.

She's dead, Draco.

No. They were lying. They had to hold me down as I screamed and kicked. Where is she? Where is she?

Dead. Sacrificed her life for yours, our beloved son.

They told me I had betrayed Voldemort. In a desperate, final display of loyalty, a young Death Eater by the name of Barnabas Abigor had tried to kill me for it. He was only fifteen.

They told me she must have seen it from over my shoulder. At the last second, at my last step, she had swung me around.

They told me it happened too fast. It was over in a beat of a hummingbird's wings. The girl barely had half a second to think.

They told me all of this, and they were lying. I knew it, because I knew Angel. And my Angel thought about absolutely everything. I knew that in the single, atomic moment it had taken for the curse to travel from Abigor's wand to me, she did think. And it was exactly this I could not live with.

I did not leave the room for months after that.

At first, I waited. For what, I did not really know. Perhaps a letter, or a some sort of sign that what they had told me was not true. I penned letters of my own. To Angel, Hannah, Harry, anyone; inking my desperation onto parchment before crumpling them up and tossing them aside.

It took two whole weeks of crushing silence before it finally sank in. I was reading a book on Magical Creatures in the library - a chapter on unicorns. In between the words 'golden' and 'hooves', it hit me out of nowhere. Angel was dead. I was alive, and she was not.

First, the earth folded in on me.

Then, the tears came - sudden, and in torrents. I cried and cried and cried, until my lungs emptied of air and my eyes were red and raw.

It was like no one even cared that she was gone. The sun still rose and the pale moon shone as brightly as ever. But that was the real world.

Mine? Mine was plunged into darkness. Obliterated, like a glass cup shattering onto the floor. The stars that had burned with her fire were extinguished, snuffed out like candle flames. The sky she had painted for me now opened up into a chasm, swallowing the colours and leaving me in grey monotone.

Where was she buried? Did anyone cry as they lowered her into the soil? I did not - and could not - know. Maybe I did not want to.

However, of one thing I was certain - flowers bloomed from the ground she lay under. And for every petal they gained, one of mine will wither away. Unable to eat, drink, or sleep, the days passed by in a blur.

"Be sensible, Draco. This isn't what she would have wanted," my mother told me. "She would have wanted you to live well."

And she was right. Angel would have wanted me to eat, drink, and sleep. She would have wanted me to celebrate being alive, to be kind and good to people, to live voraciously and fearlessly.

But Angel hadn't known that the only reason why I ran back was because I had wanted to live that very life with her. She hadn't known that a world in which she did not exist was not worth living in, and now she never would.

Desperately, I clung to the echoes of her voice, her laughter, her touch. You look great, by the way. Muggles drew all that, you know? Let's stop saying things, just for tonight.

I love you, Draco Malfoy. I love you more than the stars.

They wanted to Obliviate my memories; it would have eased the pain. But I did not want to forget the way her rosebud lips had felt against mine, the feather-breath on my cheek when she told me she loved me. I wanted to remember the sweetness in my lungs when I saw her in that dress, and the moving shadows on her face at the Thestral pond.

I said I would hate them forever if they asked again, so they didn't. Instead, they urged me to leave it behind.

"Oh, do stop wallowing, Draco," my father sighed. "She died a painless death. Be thankful you were at least spared the agony of watching it. You're a Malfoy, you'll find another." My mother stood behind him, nodding in agreement.

I looked at them, then. Cold and distant, they have never felt a drop of warmth in their lives. What could they possibly know of a love like ours?

I hated them. But more than anything, I hated myself. Thoughts whirled around in my head unceasingly. If I had not run back; if I had just gotten on that Muggle plane with her that night; if I had not agreed to the Death Eaters' plan; if I had not been born into this family. If, if, if.

Death has a funny way of dangling memories in front of you, like a carrot to a rabbit - right under your nose, but always out of reach. And it was in such a manner that Death taunted me -  whispering to me the conversations Angel and I had spoken in the dark under my sheets; now wetting my eyes the same way she had cried so many times for me.

I missed listening to her, telling her things. I missed counting down the hours in the day till I could see her again. I missed her tearing down the walls I had spent years building around my heart.

Before the battle, I thought I had been prepared to never see her again. But nothing could have prepared me for this.

It would have been different if she was alive and well somewhere far away. Perhaps I may have even been able to let go if she was with someone else. But she had a choice to live for herself, or die for me. And she had chosen wrong.

Trapped in my gilded cage of fine marble and expensive wood furnishings, I truly feared I would go mad. And so, in the drudgery of day, I busied myself playing the piano in the empty hall, until the notes reminded me of her laughter. Then I would move to the library, where I spent hours studying Astronomy.

After I learnt to build my own telescope, I sat by it every night without fail, noting all the constellations I could for her. Then I would spot Polaris, and my soul would explode with grief all over again.

Some nights, I visited the Thestral pond and wished. For her back, for me to take her place, for time to rewind. For death - if only to have one more glimpse of her in the afterlife. Nothing ever happened.

It carried on like this for months. The minute hand on the clock inched on and the chimes sounded every three quarters, but time did little to smooth the jagged pain. I just learned to live with the broken pieces.

Winter came, long and unforgiving. I thought of the snow-covered ground and wondered if it was cold where she was. I would have held her close to warm her.

I began to get sick often. One week, a bad case of pneumonia almost took my life. I lay in bed, staring at the canopy while my mother held wet towels against my forehead. I wanted to tell her to just stop and let me go, but I could not even summon the energy to open my mouth. Of course, I did not die, much to my chagrin.

Eventually, the frost on the windows began to crack and melt away with the beginnings of spring. Sunlight found its way through the heavy, rolling clouds. The days became brighter and longer, and the air thickened with petrichor.

It was on one such day, when I sat on the tree root by the Thestral pond, that a letter came.

It was not the first. In the last two months, each time I was in the clearing, dozens of birds had flown straight to me, coming from all sorts of people - Hannah, Susan, even one from Cedric, and another from Harry himself.

One thing always stopped me from opening them - a fear that reading them would somehow turn into reality what some part of me still believed was fiction.

I could imagine what they said, though. Angry words, demanding to know why I had killed their friend, or condolences, telling me they were sorry for my loss.

But this one was stamped with the official Hogwarts crest, and out of pure curiosity, I broke the seal.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Dear Draco Lucius Malfoy,

Your actions during the Battle of Hogwarts have played a big part in the defeat of Dark Wizard Voldemort during the Second Wizarding War. To thank you, Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, together with the Ministry of Magic, wish to award you the Medal of Honour, for a heroic display of great courage and bravery.

To receive this award, we cordially invite you and your family back to Hogwarts castle on 2 May to celebrate the First Anniversary of the Battle of Hogwarts, where we commemorate our heroes and honour the lives lost.

It will be a formal event, and accommodation and meals will be provided from 1 May to 3 May. We await your owl no later than 15 April.

Yours Sincerely,

Minerva McGonagall
Headmistress

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

I hadn't the slightest why they would want to thank me. It was I, after all, who had started the domino chain by leading the Death Eaters into the school. I had indirectly murdered Dumbledore, and the Malfoys had only evaded Azkaban because we had defected at the very last minute.

And so the letter joined the steadily-growing pile of unopened envelopes on my desk.

Another one came a week later while I was at the same spot. A familiar brown-spotted owl burst through the greening tree branches. This would be Hannah Abbott's fourth letter to me now.

However, instead of the usual bone-colour, this one was enclosed in a silver envelope. But it was the wax seal - a cross intersected with a small 'x' - that made me open it.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

Dear Draco,

I am writing on behalf of Harry Potter, Hermoine Granger, Ronald Weasley, Neville Longbottom, Susan Bones, and the rest of Dumbledore's Army.

You haven't answered any of our owls. We hope you've been doing alright.

We know it must have been a difficult for you, but we would love if you could join us back at Hogwarts on 2 May to receive your award. Angel will be honoured at the ceremony, and we hope that all her loved ones will be there.

Perhaps coming back can provide you the healing you need. She would want to see you again.

Warmest,
Hannah, Susan, Harry, Hermoine, Ron, Neville, and all members of the D.A.

∘₊✧──────✧₊∘

I stared at the letter, reading and re-reading it. It seemed like they actually wanted me there. Why go through all this hassle otherwise? After much contemplation, I decided that maybe Hannah was right. Maybe going back to Hogwarts would provide the closure I needed to ease my suffering.

"Where did you get that?" my mother asked when I showed her the letter. "We've placed protective charms around our house for a reason, Draco. One of those is so that they would not be able to contact us."

It might have been the defeated look in my eyes, or a certain nagging guilt that tugged her heart after seeing her son waste away for a year, but she finally relented. She convinced my father that she shall go with me, and that it will be perfectly safe.

"It's good for the boy," I overheard her whispering to him in the drawing room. "At least he'll be going somewhere rather than cooped up in his room alone. If you care about our son at all, you will allow him to go."

And so on the first of May, at the crack of dawn, mother and I left for Hogwarts.