Literatti: Fiction By Deslea

The Red And The Dead
Deslea R. Judd
Copyright 2011


Fandom: Harry Potter
Characters/Keywords: Narcissa, Lucius, Draco
Rating: PG.
Spoilers: Whole franchise.
Summary: Written for the At The Close Comment Ficathon on LiveJournal. The prompt was: The Malfoys, post-war - One minute I held the key // Next the walls were closed on me // And I discovered that my castles stand // Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand
Disclaimer: Characters not mine. Interpretation mine.
Feedback: deslea at deslea dot com.
More fic: http://fiction.deslea.com



He has learned late in life that his prejudices were not all they were cracked up to be.

The scores of dead illustrate the point quite nicely as they drag Bella's remains from the room off the Great Hall. Not that he ever had much time for Bellatrix - he liked his ideals *without* a side of madness, thank you very much - but Narcissa insisted, and he doesn't blame her. Bellatrix was family, despite everything, and family is everything. Or so pureblood society would have him believe.

Of course, the folly of pureblood society is piled up in front of him, isn't it? In a wall of dead children, pureblood and mudblood alike.

All the blood is red, and all of them are dead.

+++

She has learned late in life that she is strong.

She has spent her life in anterooms, waiting for this moment. Anterooms where she thought she could be powerful, thought she could help mould the world in her image. She thought the Dark Lord would make her strong, but he reduced them and made them pawns instead.

It dawns on her that she is strong, but her strength comes from family, not from an ideology she can no longer accept. How can she, when it is written in streaks of pure and Muggle blood on her walls?

The blood is all red, and anyway, they are all dead.

+++

He has learned early in life that parents can be wrong.

Not just fallible-wrong. Profoundly fucked-up wrong. The kind of wrong that takes wrong and gives it a whole new lexicon. They trusted a false prophet and made him their god, and now he is their sacrificial lamb. Him, and the old man in front of him.

His sworn protector is a halfblood, but the blood that rises in his eyes as he takes the burden from him is as rich and dark as his own. He watches the old man tumble from the tower, and thinks:

All our blood is red, and soon I will be dead.

END