Following Her

where_is_truth

Rating: PG
Genres: Angst, Drama
Relationships: Draco & Ginny
Book: Draco & Ginny, Books 1 - 5
Published: 10/03/2005
Last Updated: 10/03/2005
Status: completed

Set later in the House Unity universe; Draco has lived a long life, most of it with her, some of it without her. Now it is time for him to follow her again.

Chapters

1. Following Her

1. Following Her

**Author’s Note: This is a one-shot set much later in the House Unity universe. I think you can manage to read this just fine without having read those, however. This is based on a song by Josh Groban called “Remember When It Rained.”**

It was, he had said on many occasions, just like her to leave and make him follow.

It is raining outside, a downpour, and though he does not acknowledge it, he has to know. He always knows. Their life had no shortage of it, no shortage of memories tied to that particular phenomenon. When it rains, he knows, and it doesn’t matter that he is bed-ridden and lying there with his eyes closed.

He knows it is raining. He must.

She left her life in the same way she came into his, and he’s fond of telling it that way. She left him in a downpour, left him without looking back, knowing full well he would follow. It was raining the night he first held her in his arms, and it was raining the first time she told him of the life they would make, the baby she expected.

It rained the night she died.

His children had never seen him cry before that night, but cry he did. The twin girls who sit on either side of his bed now had been younger then, if only by a few years, and he had refused their touch.

He had refused mine, as well, as well he should have. A son hasn’t the knowledge to comfort his father in most cases.

And though I would never admit it, I needed comforting myself, because I had loved my mother as much as he had, or so I thought.

But when I saw his tears, saw him drop to his knees, her name on his lips, the proudest man I’d ever seen brought low, brought to kneeling in the mud, the appearance he took such pride in ruined, I knew I was wrong.

My father loved her more than my sisters and I combined. He loved her more than he loved his pride.

It’s been five years since she left, and he has stayed longer than any of us had the right to expect. He doesn’t look much different than he always has—the eyes under those closed lids are still a sharp, intense gray, and his hair has only grown paler over the years, more distinct. Natasha holds her sister’s hand over the bed, and with her free hand, Molly brushes his hair back from his forehead.

He talked about her last night and cried, and though I know he’s not feeling physically unwell, these five years have taken their toll. Every tear he’s shed for her has been a little bit of himself. Tears fall, tears soak up into the ground or evaporate into the air, and eventually there will be rain again.

It is foolish of me to think last night’s tears are tonight’s raindrops, but he is dry-eyed and smiling tonight.

He wants nothing more than to be with her again, and it would be selfish of me, selfish of me or Molly or Natasha to want it any other way.

They make quite a picture, the three of them, all that flaxen hair, fine features. I do not think for a moment that Father has any trouble looking at me, but I am guilt-ridden nonetheless, hating his closed eyes, suspecting despite rational knowledge that my hair and my freckles are hard for him to look upon.

He could be thinking of anything lying there so still, anything that has to do with her, but I fancy he is thinking of their twenty-fifth anniversary and how we tried so hard, the girls and I, to make them an outdoor party to match their outdoor wedding, and we were rained out.

My sisters cried and I was sullen, throwing a pout worthy of any Malfoy, my mother said.

But they danced together in the rain.

I remember most of the times it rained, but I know he remembers every single one.

He has always been too smart for his own good, just one more thing she taught us.

“Da.” Molly speaks quietly, picking his hand up off the bed and kissing it. “Can I get you anything?”

The man who never thought his life would come to such peace, who had been certain his life would end in a dank alley at the hands of my grandfather’s people, finally opens his eyes. He looks at his daughters, he looks at me. He smirks at the leatherbound journal I hold in my lap and I return his smirk, too pained to show him anything honest.

“It’s raining,” he says.

Natasha turns her face away, her own tears coming now.

I wonder how hard it has been for him to stay here with us. Five years like an eternity, especially with a promise at the end, the promise of getting to see her again.

Harder, I wager, than for us to sit here and watch as the inevitable happens.

“She was always worth following,” my father says. He looks at me, knowing I will take note of it. He wants us to remember. He wants everyone to remember that.

How could we forget? Our family is the stuff of legends, their devotion forging a story both unbelievable and yet true.

“So follow her,” I say, and later I will see the stains in my ink, the drops marred by my own tears.

He says two names, her name and the name that had been hers in some other life, the same two names he’d screamed to the heavens the night she died, the same two names he’d let soak into countless tears and countless drops.

I move to the window, tilting my head back and tasting the tears as they run into my throat.

It will rain all night without my contribution, anyway. The heavens have stored up the tears of five years, the tears of separated halves of a whole.

It was, as my mother had said on countless occasions, just like him to make a dramatic exit.