THE FURIES ▸ Draco Malfoy

Chapter Eighteen: MORS

◤ ❝I am bound to a name that takes a life of its own. There is only one side for me, and that is the side that holds the darkness. It is within my blood, passed down from my ancestors, and spilled out into the world so that no one should forget the power we hold. Erebus is infinite, and so am I.❞ ― Andromeda Erebus◢

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:      LYPE

December 21, 1996

              The Erebus manor represented everything that Andromeda had lost. For that, she hated it. For the past that she lived inside of its walls, she could not let it go. It was a peculiar thing to walk the halls of the large place now. Around every turn, there were the portraits of the Erebus legacy soddened beautifully on the walls. Beneath each crack in the wooden floors, there were lies withered too deeply for one to uncover. Every room had its secrets, buried far and few between the family that took the name. It was home. It was hell. Andromeda could not ignore the painstaking truth in that, nor could she ignored the emotions that had her strung in every which direction. Just like the illusion of perfection the manor created, Andromeda could see the ugliness lived just as honestly in her as it did her home.

She was coping―wrongly―until she turned around a corner and came upon the face of the very man that caused her so much strife. Over time, the idea of her father became more a ghost story than a tragedy. He became less of her parent, and more of the one who wronged her. He became less of Father, and more of Alastiare. Less of a man, and more of a coward. But standing in the place that she was raised, within the walls that she was born, and underneath the roof that carried every moment she made with Alastiare Erebus, she could feel nothing but everything.

What a fool she must look like, glaring at the portrait of him. Her father had always moved elegantly, an aura of dignity and darkness. His namesake. She stared at the moving image of the man, her jaw slack and muscles unmoving. His robes were a dark green, just as all of her other ancestors' robes were, emblemed with the family symbol on his chest―but his eyes were unlike the rest of their family. They held a degree of warmth to them that she was unaccustomed to seeing. That, along with the lack of age lines on his face, was the only way she could tell that the portrait was taken before the First Wizarding War. Taken before he joined the Dark Lord. Taken before she was born. She couldn't help but feel herself to be the cause of the cold that swept his green eyes soon after.

Her lip trembled, and then she opened herself up to the pain.

Six months of grief, six months of agony, six months of fury. Every moment spent feeling as though the emptiness would burst at the seams and tear a path of destruction, and it finally happened. The sobs wrecked through her without fault, but she was blind to the echo that they left behind. So many months, so much time, spent hating her father for the selfless act that he did spilled out onto the floor of the Erebus manor and left no survivors. The loss, mourning deep into her heart, could not be weathered away as she clutched her chest in her hands. Was she breathing? Could it be possible to breathe without a heart in the first place, as hers was just ripped straight through her body?

He was gone. He left her. He was not coming back. He was dead. She knew he was not coming back. Please come back. She screamed those words, indistinctly between her mind and her mouth, unable to tell if they were actually coming out of her throat or not. He was dead.

The feeling of arms rushing to grab her from behind, and out of nowhere, lit the fire in her. Panic spread through every ounce of her bones, but the magic that ran inside of her felt distant. Out of reach. So, she did second best and struggled in the arms of the serpent sucking the life out of her, pushing and clawing and sobbing her way out of the hold of death. Sounds buzzed around her, voices trying to fight their way out, but her eyes shut tight and she fought harder against the iron grip.