分卷阅读67（2 / 2）

Nothing more was said until they arrived at Kings Cross.

The same limo-that-was-actually-a-carriage that had greeted them during Christmas vacation waited for them outside the station and they rode in silence to the Manor. Ever so often Harry would look over at Draco and, as the carriage got closer and closer to his home, the blond paled just a little more. Harry didn’t have to guess to know what he was thinking, or rather remembering.

The Manor itself didn’t look like it had changed from the last time they’d seen it. Outwardly, one could almost believe nothing had happened. Such delusions were shattered when Draco was presented with a list of what artifacts had been broken beyond repair by a shivering House Elf as they walked in the door.

“But we is fixing everything other than those, Master Draco sir,” it said hurriedly.

“I’m sure,” Draco cut the creature off abruptly but with no malice in his voice.

The House Elf’s eyes fell sullenly to the floor. “Master Lucius is out on the terrace Master Draco, sir.”

Draco nodded and the House Elf disappeared. Together, Harry and Draco walked through the first floor to the back gardens. A casket of white marble, covered in a clear film which hummed of magic, levitated there and Harry almost couldn’t look at the former Malfoy patriarch.

The Death Eaters had left Lucius’s body untouched, except for his wings which were broken beyond even the repair of skilled House Elf magic. The tattered black wings, still in their steel form from when he’d died, had been arranged around his body, which was dressed in what Draco knew had been his favorite outfit. At his feet lay the familiar snake- head cane.

Harry had done his own research to know how to properly act during the funeral, and stepped up to the casket as Draco did. When Draco placed both hands on the foot of the casket, Harry placed one of his on Draco’s shoulder. Together they walked slowly over the snow-covered land towards the very back of the land owned by the Malfoy family.

The Malfoy’s owned a mausoleum, which had been built in the style of ancient Greek architecture. It was tucked away in a heavily forested area, all gleaming white stone in contrast to the dark stone of Malfoy Manor itself. The doors had been opened at dawn by the House Elves, doors that were only to be opened when a body was to be placed inside. Wizarding mausoleums, while rare in this day, had long ago been built to expand as more members of the family were added, so as to never run out of room. When a family built a mausoleum, they would never have to build another. What had fascinated Harry, in a grotesque manner, was that nobody ever placed in a wizarding mausoleum ever decayed. The magic inside the mausoleum kept them looking as they did when the body was first placed there. Husband and wife, or husband and husband, or wife and wife, were placed together—to forever sleep next to each other.

Personally, Harry was glad that Draco’s father was going to sleep alone for eternity, rather than sleep with Narcissa Black when she died. He was sure that Lucius himself would have preferred it.

In the doorway Harry stopped and let Draco continue into the room alone, his hand falling to his side as the young Malfoy patriarch walked into the room. It was ornately carved, and Harry couldn’t help looking around from the doorway. There was one grave per section of wall, so that no Malfoy was buried above another Malfoy. Instead there were carvings of that Malfoy couple’s life carved both above and below the bodies on the wall. There was only one spot in the room without a body, and Draco gently pushed Lucius’s casket towards it. He lined the casket up with the open alcove in the wall and for a moment stood in contemplative silence, his eyes looking over the ornate carvings of his father’s life. He then looked to his father and spoke three words, “Pax vobiscum, Pater.” Peace be with you, father. And then he pushed the casket gently into the wall. The white marble of the casket melded to that of the wall until Harry could not tell what had been casket and what had been wall in the first place, and all that was left was Lucius’s body lying in the alcove immortalized by magic for eternity.

Draco turned and began to walk towards Harry, slowing to a stop at one of the bodies lying closer to the entrance of the mausoleum. Harry could see the black wings that cradled the two bodies lying there as if in sleep, one of them the only other Veriae that had existed in the Malfoy family. Draco looked at his ancestor for only a moment before again heading for the doorway.

Draco slowly disentangled himself from Harry and carefully left the room leaving the other boy still sleeping. He couldn’t sleep any more tonight if he’d tried. There were too many things whirling around in his mind to allow him the solace of sleep.

Draco meandered past the sleeping pictures as he walked towards what had been his father’s rooms. He needed a place to think, and his feet guided him towards one room as if by their own will.

He entered his father’s study slowly, walking over to the fireplace and calling on a small current of magic to heat the logs that had been placed there. In the light of the flames the first piece of jewelry that he would ever wear glittered like molten gold. The Malfoy signet ring, one that had been made to fit his own finger. The same ring that still adorned a hand of every single Malfoy patriarch that he had seen in the mausoleum today. Now it was his turn to begin wearing the mark that told the world of his heritage.

Wearing it though, brought his mind back to the trial and, inevitably, back to Harry. Almost on a whim, Draco summoned a House Elf and asked for it to bring him the Malfoy matrimonial bands. Two rings that had been passed down for generations upon generations.

The House Elf quickly appeared with a small wooden box made of cedar. Draco thanked it before dismissing it and returning his attention to the box itself, as if maybe the object in question could give him the answer he sought.