Marble

Draco forever stands on the edge of the forest. In the rain, in the sun, in the snow. Harry tries to save him, because in the end he just can't help himself. HPDM, Post-War

Chapter One - Grief

Minerva first told him, slightly offhand and flustered about something else, a few days after the end of the battle.

She'd insisted he'd stay away from everything, all the reparations, healing the wounds, counting the dead, for a while – let others do the hard work, since he'd 'done so much already' – but of course he couldn't. He'd been away from the castle too long; such a long time away from home. He wasn't going to leave it now.

Even with a missing courtyard and the identical, permanently sombre expressions of everyone he passed, he was still glad to be there once more. But what she said stuck in his mind, and it proved to be more pervasive than even his need to mourn.

He first saw him a week after he'd first heard of what happened, when he'd finally succumbed to the need to seek him out. He thought he caught his first glimpse of him from just beyond the castle, a glint of white that shone out in the grey and black and green that he hated, the sight of a forest like the one burned forever onto his brain from exposure and he was never going to go camping again as long as he lived.

At first, as he walked, it wasn't real to him – the shape too indistinct, the iridescent, gleaming grey too out of place this side of the grounds and with only the kin of Dumbledore's tomb to keep it in company of kind for miles around.

But when Harry reached a few steps away, it slammed into his head like a Crucio and he jerked himself sideways to vomit loudly onto the scorched earth.

There Malfoy stood. He struck a sad, eternal pose of shock and defensive movement, his arms reaching out, frozen, as he shielded his face. The hairs of his furrowed eyebrows were set in gentle ridges against his brow, his once alabaster skin now ironically more so than ever before. And would always be so, if what Minerva said was true.

Stuck in the same place, in the same pose, with the same fear. Forever. There for children to avoid, or mock; there to be rained on, battered by the cold and the wind and to see the seasons through without ever feeling the warmth of summer or the bite of snow.

Harry retched again, and wiped his mouth on the back of his sleeve.

Draco was handsome even rendered clumsily in marble. The sheen of the polished surface let the sunlight glint off sharp cheekbones, and the solid, constant colour of the stone gave him an ethereal quality that Harry would never have associated with him in life.

Life, Harry thought. Malfoy was dead. And not even the kind of dead he could metabolise, move on from; no, the git had to go and be preserved for eternity, right in the back garden of the only place in the world Harry felt safe, just to ruin that for him too.

Harry squinted at the glow of the setting sun, first on the horizon then in the reflection on Malfoy's suit jacket, whipped out at an angle from his lean body as if caught by a strong wind and held there.

I'm sorry, Malfoy, he thought.

Harry stared up at the canopy of his bed as tears silently slid from the corner of his eyes, until the dampness of them reaching his hair and curling in the shell of his ears became too irritating to stand. He eased gently into sitting up, grunting as the movement jarred his recently mended ribs.

Minerva had offered him the empty quarters used by the scores of DADA professors Harry had seen across the years. No, she'd offered more than that; she'd suggested he take them permanently, along with the role. She asked him to be the new Defence professor.

Harry had refused the rooms, but he'd had no idea what to say about the position. Hogwarts was home. He knew that even as he looked out into the emptiness of his old dormitory room, felt the dull ache as he observed Ron's old bed and thought of Fred. He should have leapt at the offer, made it home for as long as he was needed, stroll the halls in his hundredth year with a beard long enough to rival Dumbledore's.

And, all those years, look out of the window and see the grounds, see where so many friends, so many children, died for a cause he brought to their doorstep? Stand in front of fresh-faced first years, and see the pale, lifeless faces of their brothers and sisters, bloodied bodies laid out on the very stone floors they'd skipped across...

Look out of a window and see Draco Malfoy, preserved for an eternity in perfect, vein-less marble.

Harry stood, and shuffled over to the window. A low, muggy fog hung over the grounds, and he didn't know whether the glint of white that flickered here and there in the mist was his mind playing tricks on him. Minerva said he was dead. Dead, and gone, leaving the most harrowing type of corpse.

Harry didn't know whether he'd stay at Hogwarts or not. As he pressed a damp palm against the soft whorls of the glass pane, he silently wished that Malfoy had had that choice.

'Hello, Harry,' Hermione smiled as she teetered over the crumbled stone that remained of the court yard. Harry echoed it weakly, moving over to relieve her of an excessive load of bags and books and help her gingerly navigate the ruins. 'Been busy?'

'Not really,' Harry shrugged, peering into a bag as they walked together into the castle. 'McGonagall's been trying to keep me away from the reconstruction. I think she thinks I'm a bit delicate.'

'Well, Madame Pomfrey did say you had to rest,' Hermione admonished, reclaiming her bags as they advanced to the library. 'Perhaps she wants you to avoid ending up under another archway.'

'I'm pretty sure I know where I went wrong,' Harry protested, making her smile. 'I just don't like feeling useless.'

'Harry, you know she thinks you've done enough already,' Hermione used her specially provided key to unlock the huge library doors, and they both leant their weight into one hefty panel of wood to ease it open with an echoing creak. 'I agree, as it happens.'

'Then I think you've done enough too,' Harry countered, hooking the door to the wall. 'What are you even doing?' He asked, smiling winningly when Hermione gave him an exasperated glare.

'I've been allowed access to some of the Ministry collection, so I can research the original wards placed on Hogwarts,' she explained with an air of quiet authority, reverently laying out worn, musky smelling books on a study table. 'They didn't want me to take them, but the Headmistress insisted.'

'The original wards?' Harry slumped into a chair, inspecting the closest tome with interest.

'Yes,' Hermione sighed, pulling nervously at her hair. 'Professor McGonagall suspects we might need to do a bit of repairing work. I don't know how, though,' she shot Harry a worried look. 'If it took four very powerful witches and wizards to cast them in the first place, I don't see what good I'll do.'

'I bet you could do it in your sleep,' Harry smiled when she flushed and swatted him on his arm. 'Tell me if you need any help. I'm not far off going around the bend.'

'I'll assume by that you mean practical help, and not research help,' Hermione chuckled at his sheepish grin. 'Alright. It might keep you out of trouble.'

'It's not like I meant to knock the thing over,' Harry muttered, flipping through the book and holding back a sneeze when he accidentally released a cloud of dust.

'I'm sure no-one means to end up under a block of stone, and break half their bones,' Hermione sniffed, 'but you managed it anyway.'

'I'm fine now.'

'Well, maybe staying away for a while is for the best.'

Harry sat on the cloak he'd draped over the damp grass, back purposefully turned to the castle. Malfoy's statue stood at the corner of his eye. He could choose not to look at the castle, or the statue, but not both, unless he wanted to take a long muddy walk to the opposite side of the grounds. He tried lying back and looking at the soft blue-grey of the sky, but the hard ground made his shoulders sting with pressure.

With where he sat, Malfoy's back was turned to him; the edge of his coat shone a bright, eye-searing white, and the low sun cast a long, sharp shadow across the blackened ground around him. Harry was too far away to see him in detail, and too close to be able to look away.

The pose was the worst part, Harry thought, or maybe the expression. Pained, desperate. Minerva said another Death Eater had caught him trying to flee with his parents during the final battle, when Harry had only had one thing on his mind. The senior Malfoys had been found lying, lifeless, on the hill. Draco had been special.

Minerva said they'd tried to move him. She'd said it was impossible; a force greater than its weight was keeping that statue fixed to the ground. She'd said a man from the Ministry had come to see it for proof of Draco's death. He'd suggested they destroy it.

Maybe it was better off like that; smashed into a thousand shards of white and grey, buried in the ground with a headstone in a graveyard like normal and not there, solitary, its own horrible, grotesque memorial. But Harry couldn't imagine having the strength to do it. He tried to picture pointing his wand at that face, looking into those warped features and echoing that feeling of fear in his heart, and casting Confringo. Harry's stomach churned.

He stood up, letting out a low hiss as his leg twinged with the effort.

'Getting anywhere?'

'Maybe,' Hermione all but grunted from her position slumped over on the desk. 'Not as far as I'd wanted to in three days. I have discovered something quite useful – a kind of diagnostic charm for buildings. It's just very reliant on adaptation for scale and the spell formula is not something I've encountered before.'

'You say a different word for big and little buildings?' Harry furrowed his eyebrows, and Hermione laughed.

'Kind of,' she smiled, stretching back and sighing. 'I'll need Professor Flitwick's help, I believe, but he's busy at the moment.'

'I saw,' Harry agreed. 'Levitating the pillars back into place. Something I could be doing,' he added grumpily.

'And you could end up back under the brickwork for your trouble,' Hermione patted his hand. 'You're still supposed to be resting, might I remind you.'

'Neville's not resting,' he retorted grumpily.

'He should be,' she replied. 'If it helps, next time I see him, I'll nag him about it.'

Harry chuckled, imagining Hermione's berating tone and wagging finger in Neville's bemused face. 'Thanks, that would help.'

'What have you been doing, if not resting?'

'I have been resting,' Harry's tone was indignant. 'I've spent a lot of time on the grounds, near the forest.'

'I haven't really been out on the grounds. Too busy in here,' Hermione said absently as she rifled through her notes.

'You'd know if you had been.' Harry rubbed a hand across his face.

'What do you mean?'

'Never mind.'

Harry had finally worked up the courage to go near him again. It. Him?

Harry stopped a few paces away, and took a couple of deep breaths. Whether it was an it or a him didn't matter. There was no point in getting into the finer points of souls and empty bodies. Malfoy was dead.

He's dead, he thought again, as he shuffled the last few steps forward. Dead dead dead. Dead, even though there he was standing there in front of him, dead even though there were his eyes widened in shock and his hand reaching out and dead even though Harry could touch him.

The marble was horrible. The paleness rendered him a ghost, but a tangible, physical one that wouldn't just float away. At least Malfoy as a ghost would tell him to stop staring, would call him a git and make him leave, because as much as he wanted to Harry couldn't bring himself to turn and walk away.

'I'm sorry,' he whispered, watching the red and pink of the sun ease across the shine of the stone, turning grey to colour and maybe Harry could pretend he was alive again. 'I really am.' A soft, peachy tone slid across one sloping cheek, and Harry's eyes stung.

'You have a new cousin, you know,' he burst out, jutting his chin to the floor and breathing deeply for a minute. 'I mean, a second cousin, or something. Tonks – Nymphadora – she was your Aunt Andromeda's daughter. She had a baby with Lupin. You'd hate that,' he gasped out, stuck in the jarring space between a desperate laugh and a sobbing cry. 'Blacks mixing with werewolves.'

Harry turned in a tight circle. 'He's called Teddy,' he stated simply, as if that would explain everything. 'He's a metamorphmagus, like his mum. He's -'

Harry choked, spluttering a sob, and leant forward with his eyes screwed shut. He gulped a few breaths before straightening again. 'He's beautiful. His gran has him – Tonks and Remus died, in... in the battle. Like you did. They made me his god-father.'

This was getting too hard, but he felt like he had to do it. 'Fuck, Malfoy – when I first heard about you, after, I – went to see him that day, and when he saw me... When he saw me, he turned his hair blonde. I don't know...'

Harry began to cry then, sobbing in juddering, desperate gasps as his stared unseeingly at the ground beneath his feet.

Sunset again. Harry didn't know why he'd come, or why this time of day. It didn't make it easier.

'Hi,' he shuffled his feet awkwardly in the dirt. 'Saying I'm sorry doesn't seem enough. Yeah, I know, 'of course it isn't, Potter',' he tried to mimic the haughty tone in his head, then felt grimy and unpleasant.

'I can't sleep,' he rushed out in a gasp. 'I mean, I had nightmares before but now I can't even sleep. To be honest, I keep seeing you. I can see you from my window,' Harry tilted his head and rubbed aggressively at the side of his neck. 'But, I mean, I can see you when I close my eyes.'

Should he really be admitting this all to the statue of someone who hated him when he was alive? This was ridiculous. Maybe Harry was going around the bend.

'I'd swap places with you if I could.' Harry could almost hear the snort of derision in his ear. 'No, really. I...' He coughed, and watched the breeze rustle the leaves of a tree just over the line of Malfoy's outstretched arm. 'I know you hated me. I – I didn't hate you. You didn't deserve this. I mean, no-one deserves this, but you really didn't.'

Now he wasn't even making any sense. 'McGonagall wants me to teach Defence,' he mumbled, rubbing at his damp eyes. Well, that didn't help. 'It would make sense. I haven't got any NEWTS, so... A job elsewhere might be hard.'

Sure, Potty, the Malfoy in his head sneered. Hard for the Chosen Twat to get a job.

'I know, I sound like an idiot,' he took a gasp of air. 'I don't know if I could stand seeing you every day, okay?' Harry bit his lip, hard enough to draw out the copper taste of blood. 'I don't know if I could walk around like everything is fine while you're stood out here like this. Everything isn't fine while you're out here, like this, is it.'

The wind picked up, snapping together branches and whistling through the edge of the forest, weaving its way around the trunks of the trees. Harry stared into the deepening dark of it for a moment, imagining himself emerging from the gloom, eleven years old again and a frightened Malfoy in tow.

'But – I don't want you to just be left here.' He shoved his hands into his pockets with unnecessary force, and made himself look the statue of Malfoy in the face as he snorted in his breath erratically through his nose. 'I know – it's stupid. You're dead,' he snapped to himself. 'You're dead – why the hell did you have to – only you, I swear, Malfoy,' Harry barked, scraping tears away from his face with the cuff of his jumper. 'Only bloody arrogant, superior you would not die like everyone else – would end up a fucking statue!'

Immediately Harry's stomach hollowed out, and he felt despairingly, hauntingly sad. 'You should have had a chance.'

Please review, and wait for this fic to get less angsty :)