Blood Bound

Chapter 33 - Christmas (Draco)

A/N

Hopefully this double update and the fact that this second chapter is so much better will make up for how boring the last one was. Anyways I love you all and I'm feeling nostalgic and a little bit sad because there's only one chapter left after this one.

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It felt wrong, to be getting off the Hogwarts express and have nobody there to greet him. It had been the norm for his childhood, to climb off the train and search for the familiar head of his mother's warm blonde hair.

Instead of being engulfed in a hug and told how much he was missed, Draco was greeted by dirty looks and thinly veiled sneers by anyone who noticed the lone Malfoy walking through the large crowd. It was something he'd grown used to after his first outing post-Azkaban and house arrest. He supposed he couldn't blame them for their hostility, but it grew annoying how everyone reached for their wand when they noticed him, even if he understood why.

The skin of his dark mark burned with shame beneath his sleeve under the public gaze. How he longed to be back in his dorm with Granger, firewhiskey in hand while she proofread her essays aloud. Instead, Draco straitened his shoulders and held himself proudly -like a proper Malfoy- and waltzed through the crowds of people, trunk floating behind him as he headed for the nearest floo.

--

Hurried footsteps could be heard on the marble outside the receiving room as the green flames died around him. Stepping out of the fire and brushing ash from the shoulders of his jacket, Draco tried to suppress his excitement as the sound of his mother's heeled steps grew nearer. As he shed his travelling cloak and sent it floating over to a rack in the corner of the room, the grand double doors flew open so aggressively the sound of the handles connecting with the wall echoed around the room.

He would have been more concerned about the walls of his ancestral home if not for the distraction of his usually cool and composed mother rushing across the room and throwing herself into his arms, happy tears spilling down her cheeks. It was jarring; Narcissa Malfoy did not run, nor did she cry. A proper lady walked with planned purpose, never in a rush to be anywhere, and crying was meant to only occur in the solitude of locked and silenced rooms. Yet here she stood, tears dampening his jumper as she clung to him like he may disappear at any moment.

Recovering from his shock, Draco returned his mother's hug as well as her words of happiness to be together again. Truthfully, he'd been worried about her alone in the manor; elves tended to make bad company, even the free ones they now employed.

A while later the two of them sat together in the garden, his mother's favourite place on the property as well as one of the only areas unscathed by Voldemort's habitation of the manor. They sat across a small table from one another, his left arm between them as she examined the intricate inkwork that obscured his dark mark. The skin felt sensitive beneath her touch, not from the new tattoo thanks to a murtlap essence-soaked towel, but rather likely from its lack of exposure to anything other than the arm band he'd used to hide it since the war.

"And you say the Lovegood girl did this?" she asked finally. The revelation of the inkwork had stunned the usually composed woman into silence for quite a while. Draco understood that, he'd said nothing for the better part of an hour when the Ravenclaw had finished and had simply stared at it until his eyes burned and struggled to focus.

"Yes mother." He answered, uncertain how she was going to react. Would she be mad he'd obscured the last reminder of their former Lord? Or horrified that a blood traitor had seen fit to touch a Malfoy?

"It's lovely, she'd a very talented young witch." Was all she said, which was both much more and also significantly less than he'd expected. She wasn't wrong, however. The design -which Lovegood had told him was all Granger's creation and that the Ravenclaw was simply putting it on the canvas- was so intricate he'd yet to appreciate the entirety of it in the twenty-or-so hours since he'd received it. The design was much larger than he'd anticipated, starting just above his elbow and extending down to past his wrist and over the top of his hand. The ink also wrapped around the entirety of his arm, not simply his inner forearm where the mark lay underneath the layers. It was nearly impossible to see the ugly thing under the layers of magical plants -an homage to his love of herbology that he greatly appreciated- she'd drawn over his skin.