Title: Light

Author: Amethyst (AmethystJackson@hotmail.com)

Category: Angst

Rating: PG-13

Summary: A look at Draco, three months after the death of his wife.

Spoilers: None, really.

Disclaimer: Not mine, obviously. I'm not J.K. Rowling. Never will be, as much as I may wish.

A/N: This was written for (on LiveJournal) heinous_bitca's Fifteen Minute Ficlet challenge. This one ended up totally finished, so I'm posting. It's very angsty (don't ask where it came from; I've no clue), and it has pretty much the same plot as Death, except this version is intelligible. Go now. Read and be depressed!

~

Light poured into the room from the cool morning sun in the west. It drifted over the man sleeping in the bed in that room. At one time, the sunlight would have served as a refreshing wake up call. The sun had become kind in the mornings after Ginny Weasley had come into his life. The man began to enjoy waking up, and he would smile each morning when he found the redhead fast asleep in his arms.

He had nothing to wake up for now.

The last battle had torn them apart. It had been so fast, so simple, and it had destroyed him.

It was his father's way of punishing him for stepping into the light. Malfoys were meant to dwell in darkness. No, there was no room for him in the light, and he should have known that. He learned that when, with one quick thrust, his father's sword slid into Ginny Weasley. Draco had watched the blood run, watched Ginny turn pale. He had held her and watched her die. And in that moment, after her last words had drifted into the air with her last breath, when her eyes glossed over, he knew his own life was over.

In a burst of rage, brief insanity, or perhaps logic, he had taken the weapon that had killed his wife and used it to kill his father. The small amount of love that he had still harbored for his father had become the brightest, burning hatred he had ever known, and it never slept, even as his father bled away. The hate was the only thing that could fill the space Ginny had once occupied. Without it, he would have nothing.

As the sunlight warmed his skin, his cold heart had the same debate with itself that it had had every day for the past few months. Why not give up that hate and fall into the emptiness with all the others? Why go on with life when there was nothing to live for? Why? And still, his heart held fast to the hatred, or perhaps the hatred clung to his heart, and he got out of bed, just like he had every day for the past few months.

It was senseless, yes, but then again, Draco had lost all sense a long time ago. It might have been the moment his father died or the moment that Ginny died or the moment the sword had cut through her, or even the moment he had fallen in love with her. And without any sense of warmth, the light could do nothing but watch him and wait for the day when he would wake.