Draco licked his lips and stared at the ground. His black shows shone dully back at him, shuffling on trodden grass.

It should have been raining. It should be windy. Or snowy. Or thundering. Something a little more appropriate ought to be falling from the heavens than this average, warm sunshine. He looked up at the sky, watching the endless clouds contrast with the sharp horizon. It never failed to vaguely daze him as a child - though he hadn't had the time recently to stop and look up around him anymore. Although at this very second he seemed to have more than enough to waste looking up and wondering. He had enough time to do anything that wasted it.

A grin flickered onto his face. Here he was, at his mother's funeral, contemplating cloud formations. The humour was lost on everyone else.

But he still wished it would rain. Apart from anything the sun was making the black clothes uncomfortably close and itchy.

Someone placed a hand on his shoulder and he was forced to return his mind back to earth.

It was a woman, one of the group that had come completely clad in black, with not so much as a finger on show to the world.

"Such a shame…" she sighed. Draco stared past the gossamer veil. A distant cousin. Someone. "…and after your father as well."

Draco had heard all this too many times before. Without the luxury of a hat to hide behind, he arranged his face carefully. "She didn't want to live. I think she's happier now."

He hoped anyway.

"Of course, of course."

There was a moments lull before Draco realised he was required to speak. "Are you staying afterwards? I think my mo-" He stopped suddenly realising to late his mistake, "I mean, there will be some tea and coffee back at the manor if you want to come."

For a sickening second, he thought that… he thought that someone else would be organising everything, seamlessly behind the scenes.

Whoever this woman was, she nodded mutely and moved along to comfort someone else.

He wasn't sure what he was supposed to feel. Everyone else seemed to know what was going on, whether or not it was genuine was a different subject, and was expecting the same from him.

Everything had happened so quickly. Where it had all began he couldn't put his finger on – that one key event, or person, he could blame eluded him. There were plenty of people he would have loved to blame but he was hardly going to waste his time and resources on something that he knew to be false.

He wasn't that stupid anymore and knew that he was out of his depth, completely.

"Draco, dear, there you are…"

After several more, boringly similar, conversations occurred, he decided to move away. Hopefully someone in this emotionally backwards family would realise he wanted to be alone. Just for a moment. There had to be somewhere he could hide for a while.

He found a bench beneath an old, sturdy tree and stayed.

The world seemed wrong at the moment. Here he was, dressed in best black funeral robes, watching the blossoms and green leaves sway in the breeze harmlessly. Draco sighed. If this was the time when he should cry, why wasn't he? Though no doubt everything would catch up with him at some point, at the moment he was enjoying the comfort of a little numbness.

Spring was everywhere. He could see it, smell it, hear it… but why couldn't he feel it?

His eyes fell onto the seat. There was a small metal plaque attached to the wood unceremoniously with a single nail.

For Michael and Josephine, who were, and are always together.

Birdsong reached his ears as he slowly sat down on the seat. His face rested in his aching hands. But all he did was stare down at the grass beneath his feet. Another heavy sigh.

Somehow he knew that he would never have that person, that perfect person that would remain close throughout.

His eyes squinted through the stinging sunlight, down at the small crowd below.

He had no idea so many people would come here. Too late he wished he had told no one, and kept this moment to himself. But that was impossible. Despite everything he thought of his mother, she had friends, allies, from so many places. And then there was what was left of her broken house.

The Noble and Most Notorious House of Black

Thinking about it, he had hardly known anything of them when he was child – only his aunt Andromeda at Christmases. And even then it had only been when he could understand the consequences of his father finding out…

You wouldn't have thought that someone as… refined as Andromeda would have married a Mudblood. But Draco wasn't in the right mood to walk along that path, especially now. It had been a subject of selective memory for both his parents. Bringing up the child of that marriage was a mistake you only made once.

But now he wouldn't mind seeing either of them. Anyone but these people who had come, not for him, but for themselves only.

Draco looked out across the fields beyond the gates. There were a few clouds hugging the horizon, innocently white, and they made his mood worse.

His mother should be here. She should have been more concerned with her living flesh and blood rather than that man. Draco glared at the cows grazing off in the distance.

Maybe he should go home and stay there forever, live off the vast amounts of alcohol his father stashed in various places. Shun the world. Undoubtedly though, someone would drag him out. No one seemed able to accept that he wasn't a child anymore… It had been almost two years since he'd left Hogwarts.

"Hello Draco."

And when he thought things couldn't get worse.

After a moment, he looked over at the figure behind him. Dressed in black, a woman stood with her hands clasped together. Draco felt a bitter smile pulled onto his face. Despite her tidy, out of character, appearance, he would recognise those eyes anywhere – whatever she did to them.

"Hello Nymphadora."