A/N: I felt like writing about Draco and Hermione again. Rated K+ for mentions of alcoholism.

He is living a cold life full of blond wife, blond children with pale faces and colorless eyes. This, this is the world (his world), blond and pale and cold. So he should not be seeing unruly brown hair out of the corner of his eyes. Freckles and ink-smudged hands. (Things he should never have even noticed in the first place.) They have no place in a home (house, or manor, more like) so clean. Or in a mind, for that matter. They invade anyway. Ghosts and guilt and such things—they don't really care where you think they belong. They follow you, even if you'd rather they not.

Draco is the head of Malfoy Manor now, respected and feared by his family, if not by the wizarding world anymore. But he can feel judgmental stares on his back, the nape of his neck. He knows she's there, around corners and following him. She's judging, judging, judging. And he knows a little better than that—she wasn't so cruel, was she? She was forgiving. At least enough. The last time he saw her, her eyes weren't cold towards him. She was mature. He was not. Not enough to ignore, not enough to seek help. Just immaturity, seeping from a bottle of high class wine, radiating from his head against his desk, ringing clearly and innocently against his ear as his son asks questions.

"Where is Mother?"

"Are you sick?"

"Father, what's wrong?"

Immaturity and urgency rage against each other. Immaturity, of course, wins. She is everywhere.

She's a dry sob, a great storm, and she will—not—leave. His son, however, will. Scorpius is ushered out of the room by the house elf. And Draco is left alone. Third year, she hit him. He plays that scene over and over in his head, she is hitting him, stabbing him, die, die, die. Why can't he? (Why can't he go to her, ask for less forgiveness? He deserves...for once, of course...less. She wouldn't care about his problems, he's sure. But he dreams.)

Astoria does not question his lack of absence. She is quiet, and polite. His ghost would demand to know the problem. His ghost would bring down doors. And he would talk to her, and it'd be better.

…And that's when it dawns on him.

He is in love with a ghost.