Gregory looked like he wanted to leave – unwilling to look at Draco, unwilling to look at the empty stone plinth that was all that was left of Vincent Crabbe – like he was on the verge of backing straight out of the graveyard and out of Draco’s life forever. Draco couldn’t blame him, wouldn’t blame him for that – but his words didn’t sound like the words of someone who was leaving and Draco fixed on that fact, desperate for Gregory to mean it; to truly believe that it wasn’t too late…not for them, anyway. The two of them.
Everything would always be too late for Crabbe, and Draco knew that he would never forgive himself for that.
But Gregory finally met his eyes – looked like he was on the verge of reaching out, of closing that insurmountable Crabbe-sized, Azkaban-sized gap between them – and Draco allowed himself to believe that maybe, maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe Gregory was right. He reached forward in answer, the movement instinctive, grasping for his friend’s hand – but stopped and let it fall, two feet short, empty.
Greg spoke again before Draco could sort his way through the tangle in his own heart enough to reply and it took him aback, the command – the plea – to stop. He stared, feeling like the world was sinking below his feet. A bit of the old him? Did Gregory really think there was any of him left? The world had fallen apart and taken the confident, commanding boy called Draco Lucius Malfoy away with it; the man he was now was more shell than spine, and he didn’t have it in him to issue orders to anyone. What would those orders even be, if he tried? And who would want to listen?
“I…I don’t…I don’t know that I can,” Draco admitted helplessly. “I don’t know that I know how anymore. When I…before, it was…I knew the answers, I knew what to do. That’s why I…” He shook his head. “But now, I don’t…I mean, I didn’t get any of us very far, did I?” He couldn’t stop himself from glancing sideways at the bitter reproach of Crabbe’s tombstone, silent but somehow still screaming its accusations to the sky. “Following my orders…what good did that do any of us?” Draco’s voice was as bitter and pitiless as the stone. “You in Azkaban, Crabbe…” He had to swallow down the lump in his throat before he could force the word out: “Dead. And me…” Draco shook his head. “I should have been there with you. I don’t know why they didn’t – why I wasn’t…”
He slumped, the perfect posture his father had once drilled into his spine sagging, loose and limp. “You were my best friend,” Draco said. The tombstone loomed beside him. “Both of you,” he continued. “The only ones I…the ones who really mattered. And I failed you, and I left you.“ Both of you. “I don’t…I know it’s unforgivable, Greg, I know. But I’m still sorry.”
As he listened, Gregory found himself wondering when this had all happened. The transition away from the eyes-on-the-target, solid being that he’d seen him as... and this— riddled with uncertainty and guilt like shackles. It hurt even worse to imagine that it’d always been there and that perhaps he just hadn’t seen it. Perhaps he’d just been a few paces back, focused on a tall spine and missing a glint of warning in Draco’s eye. And maybe Greg truly was as daft as they’d all said.
It hurt. It hurt to listen, to watch, and now to know. Instinctively, his head shook from side to side in small, hardly there movements until gradually growing stronger. “You can’t...” Stronger now, sharper movements: as if that could shake this all away. “Don’t tell me you think this is...” His hand started at the center of his chest before gesturing off towards the third. Goyle. Headstone. Dead. His jaw tensed at the word even just in thought. “’Ya can’t think this is your fault.”
Just as he said it Goyle’s shoulders dropped. Of course Draco thought it— because he’d thought it himself too. There was a lot of room for thoughts in five years. Nearly three million minutes of stewing with the worst of them. Blame had been easiest in the winter months, when the cold crept down your back with no forgiveness. All the orders echoed then, down to the very last one. Fingers pointed at the ice blond.
One hundred and sixty seconds of festering could do a world of damage.
But there was also a difficulty is sitting still, even when it was just holding onto a single thought. Greg had never been skilled at chess. Ask him what direction a rook moved and he wouldn’t have the slightest idea. He had watched a fair bit of matches, remembered how the pieces moved. All to protect the king, right? Rook to G4. Pawn to E3. All just jumbled pieces, letters, and numbers to him but the idea still stood— so firmly in fact that Greg took a step closer, his head giving one last, hard shake. “What about the orders you had? Huh?” He asked, head dipped as he fought to catch Draco’s eye. Five years had done enough. Clearly Goyle hadn’t been the only one with a prison sentence. “We followed. All of us. You included. So don’t... I can’t have ‘ya...” The words were catching in his throat. “Don’t.”
With a deep sigh, Goyle craned his head back to look up at the sky. Grey clouds moved glacially along, nearly hiding all of the blue. “I wondered why you weren’t there,” he admitted, gently nodding. “Seems like you want to hear it so here it is. I thought it. For months. Wondered why the fuck isn’t he here? You know, why’s it just me?” With his gaze still upward, Gregory’s jaw tightened. His hands shoved into the pockets of his trousers, old and over-sized, kept on with the help of his father’s belt. He pressed his lips tight together as the memories piled up. He could feel the chill on his spine. Like he was there again. “It got so fucking dark there. There was a horrible quiet too. Not quiet enough to be silent— no.” Tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. “You could always hear the shufflin’ and this woman screaming. And your mind it just never could stop because there was always all these thoughts and whatever.” With his eyes now closed, Goyle stood quiet in that moment. But much like Azkaban his mind kept going. Right then it was transporting him back. There was no graveyard beneath his feet; just stone and layers and layers of occupied cells. “It never stopped.” He worried it never would.
Swallowing hard, he brought his head back down, his eyes slowly lifting back to meet his gaze, glossier now than before. “Tell me why the fuck I’d’ve wanted that for you?”
snowghoul
2087
vaporwave
