Draco raced through the halls willing for it not to be true. To his surprise, he made it to the confines of his empty room. He collapsed onto the bed, consumed with the sorrows of his loss. Draco had never been close to his father but that didn't mean that he didn't care about what happened to him. Lucius Abraxas Malfoy; imprisoned in Azkaban for his Death Eater involvement; controlling father and husband; the very definition of ambition; and dead. 

Draco had received a letter from his mother moments after he was found dead in his cell. Draco had been sat at the table, eating his fill of breakfast, when the mail arrived. His owl had landed in front of him and handed him an envelope with his mother's rushed handwriting sprawled across the front. Draco and Harry had sat starring at the envelope myth-ed as to what could have made Narcissa so frantic. After several moments of staring, Draco regained control of his features and opened the envelope. He began to read the letter enclosed- Something he now thoroughly regretted. He reread it four times before the words finally set in solid: 

      Dear Draco,

Your father was found dead in his cell in the early hours of this morning, suspect dementor kiss. I will try to arrange, with Minerva, a time that I can visit you. Stick close to our Harry, my love.

        Speak soon, Mum xx

Draco had dropped the letter on the table and ran, not wanting to cause a dramatic scene. Waterfalls of tears flowed down his cheeks. He had heard footsteps in his wake but didn't dare look back. 

Ear splitting silence was all that could be heard over Draco's sobs. After several minutes of silent nothingness, there came a knock at the door. "GO AWAY!" Draco screamed into his pillow only to be ignored. Draco removed his head from his saturated pillow to find a smeared silhouette gliding towards his guilty corpse. "Draco... I'm so sorry." a familiar hand fell on his back as the hushed voice made its way through the cloud to Draco's conscience. Then it hit him: the footsteps in his wake had been those of his Harry James Potter. It pained Draco to know that all he had to do was turn around and everything would have been better, sooner. Draco peeled himself from his sweaty bed sheets and collapsed into Harry's sympathetic embrace, "I'm sorry for running away like that, I had no right to react in such a way!" Draco sobbed into Harry's chest. Harry pulled him away to look into Draco's sombre, grey eyes. "Draco Lucius Malfoy, you had every right to react the way you did... He was your father, for Merlin's Sake-" Draco flinched at Harry's use of 'was' and not 'is', "I reacted in the same way when I lost Sirius and Remus and Fred and everyone else, even Snape, and we weren't even blood related!" 

Draco's guilt doubled at the thought of all those lives lost in the Wizarding War. He had always regretted every decision he ever made and every name he had sneered. Draco had attended many of the funerals but had always sat at the back, alongside his mother, with his head bowed in respect and had always been one of the first to leave upon the closing of the ceremony. The only exception was... the funeral of Fred Weasley. Draco had never idolised anyone outside his family but he had, rather secretly, found himself looking up to the Weasley twins. Because of this, at Fred's funeral, Draco (and his mother) had sat behind Harry, Granger and the Weasleys. Upon the ending of the ceremony, Draco had stayed behind to place a gift in front of Fred Weasley's tombstone. The gift was a packet of Puking Pastels enclosed in a Silver box with "Mischief Managed" engraved into the lid which he had placed on the freshly covered grave.

Draco and Harry sat in a silent embrace for several hours before they were both called to Professor McGonagall's office, where more sorrow awaited them.