Chapter Text
ACT I
ENDOCARDIUM
::
Draco was not invited to Harry Potter's funeral. But he dressed up in his best suit and stood in the far distance, far enough to not be seen, close enough to listen just so.
He had seen it announced in the Prophet, a lump in his throat when he read the title ‘Our Saviour, Laid to Rest’.
And so, with his hands in his pockets, he watched as the people that had loved Potter said goodbye to his corpse in the casket, one by one. Granger cried, kissing his forehead. So did Weasley when he knelt by it, murmuring words that weren't for anyone else to hear.
Weasley's sister pressed a soft, final kiss to his hand and rested her forehead against the back of it, her eyes falling shut, face contorting red. Molly Weasley came next, and then Arthur and George and every other Weasley and Longbottom and Lovegood—
He was numb through it all, his heart dull, sluggish. His mind felt like sand slipping through desperate fingers, listening as Granger gave the eulogy, her eyes ringed with scarlet grief. Her face was set and composed. She looked strong, despite the way her body was so rigid—brittle in a way that seemed as if it wanted to crumble in on itself, but she wouldn't let it.
Her words for Potter were beautiful.
The whirls of the winds rustled Draco's hair and clothes, the leaves on the branches above his head. They carried a familiar, bright laughter amidst its whistle to his ears, echoing back in memory from across Great Halls and classrooms. Draco frowned, his head cocking, blinking in bemusement. His eyes traversed around for the source, but it wasn't found.
When everyone had left, Draco went to Potter's grave and laid lilies on the bed of soil. He raised his gaze, a flick upward from a bowed head through the lissom fall of his hair, his brows drawn together dolefully. It landed on the stone, the carvings, the elegant loops and curls of calligraphy.
Harry James Potter
1981-1998
"Happiness can be found in the darkest of times, if one only remembers to turn on the light."
You were our light.
"Thank you," Draco said quietly with a nod, his voice cracking. "For everything."
There was a pull in his chest, then, stretching taut the swollen bruise that was his heart. He could not explain what it was that kept him there, what kept him sitting there on his knees for longer than he knew, fixated on the framed picture of Potter's face until his eyes blurred from something he couldn't name. Potter was smiling in the picture, the ebony curls of his hair tousled and wild, falling against the hinge of his glasses. His eyes were green, brilliant and somehow even greener than the soft and slow sway of the grass nettles around Draco. The dried autumn leaves clinging to branches dropped like rain, landing, amassing the ground.
::
Today was Harry Potter’s birthday. He would have been eighteen.
Draco had always known the date. His first year was spent following the boy almost obsessively to find out more about him, overcome by a deep need to be closer to him in the same instance. He had forced himself to grow out of it after he was admonished for it. His grades and reputation had nearly suffered when faced with the new, difficult conundrum called Harry James Potter.
At least, he thought he had outgrown it. But now Draco wasn't so sure.
He woke up knowing Potter should have grown another year older, and the fact that he hadn’t — that he never would — caused Draco’s stomach to turn violently. Images of Potter, the few he’d rather not have witnessed, swirled in his mind as he stared unseeingly up at the canopy.
Green eyes open, staring. Skin pale and bluish. Nothing behind those eyes. No breaths in that chest that looked far too small and thin, the very same chest that had been heaving only moments before, the very same one that had felt so hot and alive to Draco's back as they both flew to escape the Fiendfyre flames. Potter’s hand was lax around Draco’s wand, which looked as if it had been held to his chest with his last breath.
“He shouldn’t have died,” Draco found himself saying.
“Who shouldn’t have?” An unfamiliar voice spoke next to Draco.
Listlessly, Draco turned his head to the stranger beside him, whose bed Draco was currently laying in. Pale hazel eyes stared back at him, full of hope, playful. They would have been worth staying for, so beautiful they were, if they hadn't been the wrong shade.
The thought had Draco leaving his bed very quickly and almost cursing at the white sheets that wouldn’t unwrap themselves.
“In a hurry?” The stranger asked, now tense.
Draco didn’t reply. There was nothing worth saying anyway. He found his shirt and trousers neatly folded on the bedside table. He rushed in silence whilst careful eyes watched every move he made.
“We could get breakfast—" The man tried.
“—No. No, thank you. Lovely meeting you, but I’m going now.” Draco said tersely as he slipped his shoe on and grabbed for his coat.
“But—"
He had already left the room, donning his coat, and was hastily making his way to the door as the man attempted to plead.
Draco shut the man’s door in his own face, not willing to look at his unnerving eyes again.
By the time he had found an appropriate alleyway to Apparate from, somewhat limping up the few flights from the Manor’s foyer to his room, Draco felt the first foreboding waves of hangover-induced nausea.
He wanted to hide away, preferably deep under his covers so that he might never have to leave them again. Draco thought he might get his wish until a figure at the end of the hallway came into view.
“Ah, Draco. Glad I’ve caught you," his mother greeted in an almost sing-song tone.
Draco attempted to straighten his spine out as Narcissa came closer.
“Good morning, Mother. I’m sorry to say that whatever it is might have to wait. You see, I’m feeling poorly and—”
Draco was cut off by a sharp glint in his Mother’s eyes, telling him she knew exactly why he was feeling ill and was not impressed by it.
It was moments like these that Draco wanted nothing more than to rage and break something. He’d woken up in a foul mood, with fouler thoughts. He wanted nothing to do with anything that was around him, and currently, that included interacting with his Mother.
“That was yet another late night for you," his mother said pointedly.
“Yes, just visiting friends,” Draco lied.
“Funny. I didn’t know Blaise or Pansy were so tactile.” Narcissa eyed his neck, and Draco cursed inwardly. He had forgotten to glamour the marks there. “People talk Draco.”
“Then let them,” Draco said quietly, lest he screamed it. “They already discuss much worse things about us – being a Malfoy isn’t exactly something to be proud of.”
Narcissa paused, her eyes narrowing.
“I don’t give one whit what they say about our family, Draco. I do care how these gossipmongers may hurt you, and with something so personal—” Narcissa seemed to cut herself off.
Draco thought she didn’t realise that her inability to talk about him, his preferences, was more hurtful than anything a stranger could conjure up.
“I suspect it will give everyone a good laugh,” Draco said lightly. “The Malfoy heir, a poof.”
Narcissa flinched, her eyes darting upstairs to where his father’s study was above them. Her eyes clouded for a moment when she remembered; Lucius’ keen ears and constant shadow wasn’t there to dog them anymore. Draco missed it, and thought it was strange what grief could make you wish for again.
“I don’t care anymore, Mum," he said. Any spark for a fight always dwindled very quickly these days. “I want to be alone.”
Narcissa regarded him, frustrated and concerned in the same moment. Draco hadn’t been well, but he had also not felt this low in months. There was recognition in Narcissa’s eyes, which had just glanced at a massive timepiece that stood tall in the foyer – one that stated the time and date.
“Ah," she voiced with painful clarity.
Draco closed his eyes against the thick, black shame that curdled in his gut. Turning away from her, he stumbled to his own rooms.
On his bed, he found a letter.
Dear Mr Malfoy,
We are pleased to inform you of your continued enrolment with Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Chest tightening, Draco laid the letter down on his bureau carefully, promising to read the rest of it later.
For now, he wanted to sleep. He wanted to sleep forever.
::
The Eighth Year Common Room was a rather grey and vacant place these days. People didn't quite see the point of returning to a school that was haunted by phantoms of the dead, it seemed.
And out there, in the middle of the yard, was where the phantom of Harry Potter's death haunted them all.
Some of the Gryffindors did not return this year. This included Weasley, out of grief for the man that had saved their world but had to be taken away in order to do so. They could not bear to come to the very place that they'd lost him.
When the smoke had cleared, and Potter laid still and hollow-eyed in the debri, Voldemort's body a mere haze in the face of the other's in his mind, Draco had felt a horror and agony so inexplicably deep and cutting that he might as well have stopped breathing right then and there with him, tears burning up his throat and into his eyes. He could not explain the reason for such anguish, radiating right down to his very soul, for someone that he hadn't had a civil conversation with since they were eleven.
Draco had stood there, stunned with shock and horrible grief, watching the chaos of others' grief unfolding; Granger's mournful cry as her hands shot to her mouth, Weasley's screams, mingling with the screams of his sister, Longbottom wide-eyed and shaking–
All the while something vital had shifted loose inside of Draco and fallen away from him, seeing Potter’s body slumped to the ground. The image still replayed itself in his mind’s eye. Again, and again, and again.
Draco stared out into the place where it had all happened, leaning his head and shoulder against the pillar, arms crossed over his chest. The skies were grey too, weeping. He wondered vaguely if Potter took all the colours with him when he left.
::
The first week or two was so silent here that it was almost unbearable, but now there was a chorus of conversation filling up Hogwarts, the world stabilising into itself. There was the sound of winds, of rustling trees, of laughter, the pitter-patter of water droplets, the smell of fresh plants, of wet mud and rain.
It was amongst the passing bodies, people walking back after class, that Draco saw him.
Him. Leaning against the doorway silently. He was loose-limbed, shoulder pushed into the stone, arms crossed over his chest as he seemed to watch Draco from afar.
Draco halted to a stop in the middle of the corridors, shoulders of crowds brushing past him, pushing him back a step. His brows twitched, his breaths shallow, stilled high in his throat. Potter smiled at him, a small one at the corners of his lips, which was surreal alone without the fact that this can't be because Potter was–
He shook his head, blinked, a brief flash of black before the world came into his vision again. But there was no Potter here. No Potter anywhere. He was gone. Draco's head swivelled around, dizzy and light, blinking rapid and hard as he was trying to catch sight of him again. He didn't realise he was stumbling around in a frantic circle until he knocked into another body, several thumps of items dropping to the floor.
"For Merlin's sake!"
Draco couldn't speak, couldn't move, staring at that place where Potter was, and then wasn't.
"Oh, of course. Of course, it's you." It took him several seconds to recognise the quivering voice coming from below him. He lowered his eyes to find a bushy brown mop of hair. Granger. Her hands were fluttering to pick up her books, her breaths fast and angry, like knocking into him had just knocked her over into near breaking point. "Just what I needed."
Granger finally stood up to her feet, clutching her books to her chest, looking adamantly ahead. She stepped past him, her jaw set with it all.
His mouth opened. It can't have been him, he thought. It can't have. It can't–
"Apologies," he garbled as his thoughts continued running frantically.
She paused at that for a brief moment, staring at him. Then, turning away, she strode off briskly.
Draco moved quickly to the doorway, an old corridor that he had never set foot in before. He found himself apprehensive, scared almost, but he walked ahead into the dark shadows. He peered forwards. There were no lights, just stone and echoes as his feet continued on and on, growing pitch-black. He walked until he could no longer see his own hands in front of him, and the cool stone his other hand grazed, that guided him as he ran his hands along it, was terribly cold and damp.
Suddenly, Draco stopped, his mind conjuring imaginary shapes in the shadows.
“Potter," he whispered, the quietest he’d ever been.
There was nothing except the swirl of black and the strange sense that something might be right behind him.
“Potter," Draco tried, barely any louder, in case it woke up the dark.
He could only hear his own body’s thrumming.
Then, something brushed against his cheek.
“Argh!” Draco yelped.
He ran, all gangly limbs and terror, back into the light of the corridor, back to people, safety. Draco landed rather than ran into the corridor, one that after gasping in a crumpled heap, he realised was blessedly empty. No one saw his embarrassing brush with insanity. He laughed at himself, weakly.
But that didn’t stop Draco eyeing the door carefully as he nigh-on ran away from its shadowy arc.
::
Tap-tap-tap, the quill sounded as Draco fidgeted with it.
The classroom was quiet except for the soft rattle and bubble of simmering cauldrons. After the brief memoriam given by Headmistress McGonagall that morning, there was a subdued, hesitant air within Hogwarts now. Gone was the easy conversation and the giggling laughter of careless, easy-going peers. Now there was a strange pensiveness that everyone had adopted, and it followed them all like a bad smell and chilled them bone-deep.
Draco didn’t mind it so much in this class; brewing potions provided its own strange noises. But in other classes, in all the other rooms of his school, Draco found himself wanting to scream. Glancing over at his classmates, he sensed the feeling was mutual.
There was a stiffness in everyone's gait. Professors spoke in hushed tones and couldn't seem to bring themselves to reprimand anyone. People who did laugh or chuckle in the hallways were hushed waspishly. Everyone clung to their friends desperately and no new friends were made – nobody trusted strangers anymore.
Between the steam vapours and his own listlessness, Draco followed the recipe blindly. He chopped, squeezed, grinded, sprinkled, and stirred as a mannequin would if it were so inclined.
So, if Draco messed up a few steps, he didn’t notice it. He was about to throw a handful of hellebore into the mixture before a freezing sensation shocked him and sent a fissure of panic chasing down his spine.
BANG!
When he came to, Draco was vaguely aware that there had just been a potions blast and that he’d caused it. He heard the moans and griping of those around him, the shuffle of limbs on dusty stone, and the fumbling of their professor attempting to right the situation.
Opening his eyes, blinking them as if to clear the black spots in his vision, his gaze caught on the ceiling above him; a boy sitting on the rafters, swinging his legs while looking down at Draco with a fond smile. He knew that face, but not the expression colouring it, the softness of it directed at him.
Don’t blink, Draco begged himself.
Unbidden, Draco’s arm lifted and reached above him. An unknown desire pulled deep down in his stomach, and it felt wretched.
Green eyes and the flash of a toothy grin – and Draco’s eyes betrayed him, the scene vanishing once more.
“No," he breathed.
He stood quickly and pivoted, trying to catch another glimpse of him. Draco didn’t hear anything except the high-pitched ringing in his ears. Ignoring his classmates, Draco hurried forward, his eyes scanning the rafters.
“Mr Malfoy.”
He didn't hear it, his pinprick pupils flicking over every surface.
“Mr Malfoy!”
Draco stopped suddenly, the voice snapping him back to reality. He pivoted again, this time back to the carnage he had created. Feathers, scales, powder, and gunk all made up the chaos that was now Professor Slughorn’s potions class.
“What do you have to say for yourself, young man?!” Slughorn bellowed as his classmates picked themselves up off the floor, all in various states of disarray.
“Sorry sir,” Draco said absently, his gaze still locked on the roof.
Slughorn followed it, his expression confused and agitated as he searched for what Draco was looking at.
“My hand slipped. I lost my grip on the vial," Draco offered the excuse readily.
Slughorn’s glare returned to Draco. The man had never liked him, but Draco knew that Slughorn’s dislike had turned into something a shade darker since the war.
“Twenty points from Slytherin, for being lackadaisical when in charge of such a volatile brew," Slughorn stated angrily, still casting his gaze up at the rafters like Draco, huffing.
Then Draco noticed his classmates, their furious hissing and glares, all of it directed at him, like house points mattered at all in the grand scheme of things. His stomach dropped and his hands suddenly shook.
“Now off with you, lest you make more mess!”
There were a few muttered grumbles of agreement before Draco hightailed it out of the class. His chest was now sore, and he rubbed at it, telling himself to calm down.
::
The light in the Quidditch locker room was buttery yellow. The light from the early morning sun made the steam from the shower seem hazy, unreal.
Warm water stung down his back, mottled with yellowing bruises and dark scabs. This was courtesy of three seventh year boys. They blamed him for Potter’s death, saying that Draco brought the devil to the door, that he helped the madman kill their friends, family, and loved ones.
Those three boys weren’t wrong, and their opinion was not an unpopular one. And if Draco could do it again, and Merlin how he wished he could, he would do anything, anything to save Potter.
Every time Draco thought about him, the space under his ribs burned, with shame, guilt, and hatred. Then there was a deep yearning under it all, dark and twisted and futile.
Something moved in the corner of Draco's eye, and through the hazy fog, he peered at a patch of wall that seemed to shift. He frowned at it, grabbing his wand from the little shelf in front of him before staying very, very still. He found himself moving forward, despite himself, his body burdened with a terrible curiosity.
A drip on the floor caught his attention before that dark thing shifted in his peripheral again. And now he knew it was right in front of him, some mere feet away.
Slowly, he looked up and halted his steps. There was a boy standing in front of him, wild-haired and round glasses, his eyes fixated on Draco's face, and he looked painfully young, unmistakably solid and real. Draco wanted to reach out, but he was afraid he'd vanish into a mist like he did the last time. He stood rooted where he was, instead, whitened fingers clenched tight and quivering around the tucked edge of his towel.
He could no longer put it down to a trick of his mind.
For a moment, Draco could only stare at him, keep his eyes wide open and try to make sense of what was right in front of him.
"Are you–" Draco's mouth had gone dry, his voice coming too faint and small. "Are you real?"
Potter cocked his head at Draco’s stuttered question, mirthful at first, but then an odd disquiet settled over his features. It was when the downturned smile quirked at the corners of his lips that Draco knew the boy before him couldn’t answer.
The realisation made Draco’s stomach lurch slightly. This ghost, delusion, or illusion could not speak, and suddenly Draco was desperate to hear him again.
What had Potter’s voice sounded like?
Draco’s mind conjured soft echoes of sound; a laugh in the Great Hall, a groan in Potions, that whoop of pure joy that had echoed out to Draco in Care of Magical Creatures, sparking an awful jealousy in him.
‘Malfoy.’ Draco could envision Potter’s lips forming the words, the sneer that would often shape them, but not the cadence or timber of it. Like listening to something through a soundproof window.
Then his mind played with the notion that Potter’s voice would never sound again, that those green eyes were lost and buried beneath mounds of soil. Those same green eyes that had stared forwards unseeingly as dust settled; a small, pale body surrounded by rubble and ruin.
“Say something.” Draco croaked, even though he was nine-tenths sure the demand was futile. He was so sure his chest ached because of it.
Potter did not speak, as expected. He only smiled grimly.
“Mute.” Draco snorted humourlessly. “Now, when you’ve decided to haunt me? When I actually want you to speak.” He tried for a glare, but his lip was trembling, and he had to bite it before that welling sensation behind his eyes overtook him. “Ah, but of course.”
Something impatient and frustrated reared its ugly head then. Something that, until then, Draco hadn’t let himself pay attention to these past weeks. But now, like an untreated wound, it had been festering and infecting him until it all but demanded to be examined.
And the boy just kept smiling, as if he were the one that needed to apologise.
“Though, as concerning as your silence is, it’s moot if we humour the possibility that I’ve finally cracked.” Draco exhaled harshly. “I mean, you’re dead.”
Saying it aloud seized something in his chest, the grip unrelenting.
“You’re dead!” Draco bellowed, the pain and confusion at his core demanding catharsis.
The smile slipped slowly from Potter’s too-real mouth, and now green eyes stared unblinkingly – blank and shallow.
Draco's breath shuttered and his jaw worked to set against a tremor on his lips, tightening. He stared right back, his gaze hollow.
Then, another trembling breath, his hands trembling too. Draco stepped back, finding himself shaking his head and whispering as he was turning away quickly, frantically, “I can’t, I can’t–"
He left before he could see the boy vanish again, grabbing his clothes on the way out.
::
Draco was in the library, listening to Goyle’s soft snores as he flicked through page after page idly. He wondered to himself what the point of any of this was. All that Hogwarts had taught him this past month was that people were as unforgiving as they were hypocritical.
There was a pain in his chest that wouldn’t go away, steadily building with each thump of his heart. It might be his heart; Draco thought briefly before pushing the thought away. He always was a coward, afraid to confront important things.
As he played with the new cuts and bruises on his arms, courtesy of some uppity sixth and seventh years, Draco pondered his options for the future. As soon as the thought crept up on him, he wished it hadn’t.
Draco Malfoy was a Death Eater. Draco Malfoy had no future.
He grimaced when Goyle inhaled with a particularly loud snore, causing him to nick a scab.
Thump-thump-thump.
Concentration now firmly ruined, Draco’s eyes roamed the space around him. In half a year, Hogwarts would no longer be opened to him. He felt very much as if he were on borrowed time already, and a firm deadline to his continued sanctuary within these walls made his mind obsess over the issue.
As he drank in his surroundings, his eye caught on a book which was jutting out slightly on the same shelf. The book was a strange vivid red, and the white-gold embossed on it shone a little too bright for it to be anything but an illusion.
Interest piqued, Draco dislodged his arm out from where Goyle had been drooling on it and went to pluck the book off the shelf.
The Essential Defence Against the Dark Arts by Arsenius Jigger
Draco’s mind was flooded with memories from his third year upon seeing it. It brought a quick smile to his lips. The book felt warm in his hand, and an odd sensation prickled under his skin. It must have been a spare left by one of the students. Draco had found out that the library, somewhat sentient, had a ‘finders-keepers’ policy with misplaced books. Some unlucky sod had also received the same lesson.
With furrowed brows, he returned to his seat and opened it to the first page, his mind rolling over the strange sensations the book seemed to be causing.
Draco’s stomach swooped.
Property of Harry James Potter, 1993.
Strange misery came back with vengeance, and Draco was once again questioning his sanity.
His fingers trembled. He considered putting it back where he found it.
Instead, Draco followed after some strange urge to look through the book, carefully turning the next page, past the contents and the introduction and onto the first chapter. The pages were worn, as if thoroughly read. This had been Potter's favourite class, particularly in Third Year with Professor Lupin teaching them.
There were short notes scribbled next to blocks of text in small, scrawly handwriting. Draco had to peer closer in order to make sense of them, his eyes aching with the exertion.
There were diagrams, ghastly imitations of the Red Cap's appearance. There were thoughts of an active and living mind, curled into letters at corners and bottoms of the page. Draco could imagine him, sitting on his bed or at a desk in the library, idly doodling as he got distracted while studying for a test, sitting some seats away from Draco in class as he added Professor Lupin's extra information outside of what was in the textbook, writing his personal musings in the spaces around his paragraphs, thinking, contemplating. Breathing.
Something was welling up in him as he continued to read through them, swelling into an ache in his chest. His breaths were shallow and unsteady in his throat.
He stopped at the sight of thin folded notes wedged into the centre of the book. He pulled them open, straightening them out onto the hardcover.
There had to have been something like forty scraps of parchment folded into the pages of this book. All of them seemed to be thirteen-year-old Potter letting off some steam or boredom. Draco even spied little badly sketched pictures, all of them still charmed to move – something that Draco himself was partial to when riling up the boy.
He smiled when he watched a depiction of what Potter thought would happen if Draco ever confronted a werewolf – namely him pissing himself before running away in tears. The numbers 394 were littered around the margins of it. This tickled something in Draco's mind, but he couldn’t remember anything specific.
After skimming through the book, and carefully sliding the notes back into the crease of where the pages met the book spine, Draco flipped back to the first pages. He noticed that there was no library card inside, which was odd. Draco then, as if possessed, took the book to Madam Pince.
“Oh yes, several books have been donated along with simple instructions,” Pince answered when Draco asked about the book and its lack of card. “Whomever needs it is welcome to keep it.” She beamed, which was a strange sight on her normally pinched face. Even more so knowing that the woman horded books like dragons did gold.
“They are Potter’s," he stated, dumbfounded.
Pince nodded with a confused smile. “And?”
They should be preserved. Kept like something precious, Draco wanted to say. Not thrown like pearls before swine. Not given away so that someone like me would find them.
He didn’t say any of it. Instead, he merely nodded. “I can keep this?”
She smiled again. “It’s yours,” Pince said, gesturing for him to run along with it.
Draco did, holding it close to his chest.
::
Leaning back against the headboard of his bed that night, Draco casted a Lumos, took the notes out from the book and spent hours reading through each one. He only noticed his fingers gripping the parchment tightly when he released them, seeing the dips of them creasing over the parchment.
There was one sketch of Draco in a train station, trembling against the compartment door as a dementor passed behind him through the window. Draco's cheeks flushed, mortification laying thick over him. This had actually happened. It must have been the Weasley twins who told him. Under it, it said, who are you to make fun of me when you're a coward yourself, Malfoy?
There was one that said, what the bloody hell are you not telling me about Sirius Black? Why do you have to be such a git all the time?
Another drawing made him grin. It was of him being knocked down by a Patronus charm on the stands after he posed as a dementor. Had your fun, Malfoy?
You really are a bastard. Merlin. You really– this one was angry, quill lines depressing groves into paper, torn into an irregular line at the end of the last word. Draco couldn't entirely tell what this was for. Perhaps it was for his attempts to get the hippogriff culled?
Sharp shame hollowed Draco out.
These letters, the pictures...it hit Draco exactly how young Potter had been then. How little time had been allowed to pass between the notes and his death. The fact that Draco had helped make Potter’s short time among them miserable in any sense filled him with a deep guilt and remorse that sank into his already sore chest.
The-boy-who-lived. Not the man. The notion that Potter had only been a child when he died made it all the more awful.
It all made Draco think back to murmurs shared between Granger and Lovegood, reaching him as he hid in a darkened alcove. They whispered and wept about the passing of their dearest friend. The pair spoke about their loss, his life, and the imminent future without him by their sides.
What those stolen whispers revealed had festered in Draco’s mind ever since.
Potter’s life had not been the fairy-tale as it was presented to Draco as a young boy.
Shunned...hated...hurt. Granger’s voice had sounded so lifeless around each of these utterances. Then an awful anguish sounded; oh God, Luna, why didn’t we do more?
Authors who had used Potter’s name to weave wizarding children's fables did so by making extensive use of their illusory imaginations. The boy had been despised by his blood relatives, starved and neglected – then later chewed and spat out by a wizarding world that supposedly revered him.
Even Draco as a little boy had mooned over the myth that was Harry Potter, The-Boy-Who-Lived, The Chosen One.
Those same authors had recently printed new books, all of the rose-tinted lies about their imagined hero. Potter had been too human, too real to fit the mould of their fanciful ideals. And it made Draco ache with anger that the truth of it was ignored for something more aesthetic.
Draco stared down at the Defence book unseeingly – a wish for something he couldn’t word or name rising up like bile.
He exhaled shakily. “Can I see you now?” he whispered into the air, soft and timorous.
Draco peered up from beneath wet lashes. His breath trembled as he took in the welcome sight before him.
There was Potter, bright and solid, so much so that everything else paled in comparison to him. Just as it always had. It felt like Draco was floating in a dream of his own creation; nothing felt real then. Instead, it felt like he was in those small places where nightmare and fantasy roamed.
He felt like he could do everything, could finally say anything. But he felt so stunned by it all that it rendered him deathly still and silent.
So for a moment, Draco only drank the sight of him in. There were too many words all clamouring for his attention, but this vision in front of him had captured it all instead. Draco happily surrendered to it.
He knew that this was not Potter’s ghost – this was not merely an echo of him. He could almost taste Potter’s magic in the air. It rose the small hairs on his arms. Ghosts were too flat and, well, dead for that. Draco’s eyes widened as he took Potter’s form in, understanding fully then that this was no mere imitation of Harry Potter.
“Hello," Draco whispers, still stunned.
Potter was staring too, but then nodded slightly, kicking the ground as if he were nervous. His timidity didn’t make any sense, Draco thought. What did the dead have to be anxious about? He’d imagined Potter’s ghost would be this wild thing, like Pan running with the Forest winds. Not this shy, anxious boy standing across from him. Potter was not shy – Potter was a lion.
When Potter had been alive, Draco’s eyes had always been drawn to him – his free, delighted chaos. He could remember the sound of Potter’s laughter, full-bellied and roaring. He’d heard it echo down hallways, whilst reading the newspaper in the Great Hall, on the Quidditch pitch. The sound of it had made Draco feel...strange. Off-kilter.
The absence of it made him feel far, far worse. Pain in his chest reared its ugly head, and hiked up a notch, but he ignored it.
Potter then walked closer to the bed, slowly, as if aware of how skittish Draco felt then.
He turned his head to gaze at the mess of notes and sketches strewn around Draco, some of which he still held in a tight fist. Potter settled at the end of the bed, at which Draco felt his own breath hitch, his poor lip chewed on. Draco didn’t turn to see what Harry was looking at; there were too many little shifts in his expression to keep track of.
Then, an elated smile bloomed on Potter’s features. Draco’s lips upturned as if dragged along with it. A tight sensation danced along his ribs, and his palms were not sweating despite the cool air of his dorm.
Draco tore his eyes away from Potter’s grin and looked towards the bed. Potter’s fingers seemed to brush against one of the notes; this sketch looked brighter than the rest, as if the sun had graced it and forsaken the others. Turning his head, Draco realised that the picture was not Potter’s but his.
He had all but forgotten the crude drawing depicting Potter and his broom being fried by lighting. Looking back to him as if compelled, Draco's arms twitched slightly when he saw how close the other boy was to him now. Then confusion swelled; why was Potter smiling at such a cruel, petty thing?
He watched as Potter’s eyes continued to flick over everything, like one would an old photo album. There was a strange set of expressions he wore that repeated; what seemed like mischief, sometimes amusement, but then an awful sadness shone through in shuttered movements and tense shoulders.
That sadness often resulted in Potter then staring right back at Draco again, his mouth opening as if he wished to say something, then a frustration when again he realised he couldn’t.
“There was so much to you, wasn’t there?” Draco breathed. His face crumpled. “But I didn’t get to see any of it.”
Potter held his stare – green, so green, before looking away and shrugging his shoulders. Then, with a furrowed brow, he pointed to the middle of his chest, then the willowy arm stretched towards Draco, all the while Potter mouthed the words; me...you.
“Oh, there isn’t much to see where I’m concerned, Potter.” Draco smiled tightly, swallowing with difficulty. “You were spot on, for the most part. You always were.”
Speaking in past tense...it made the backs of Draco’s eyes burn.
Potter's eyes softened, smile turning rueful, and he shook his head slightly. He made a gesture, a point downward. Now. Perhaps it was to say, there's more to you now.
Draco huffed, glanced down at his hands, the note absently held in it. "Perhaps."
Potter made a gesture then mouthed something; Draco couldn’t understand it. Harry huffed what looked like a self-deprecating laugh. And then he made a new gesture, touched his own chest. Malfoy Manor, he mouthed and nodded at Draco.
Saved me, Draco read from his lips.
He swallowed, his heart throbbing slow and erratic in his throat. "Yeah. Well. You saved me too. So, I suppose that makes us somewhat even."
Potter smiled, mouthing something at him that Draco wasn't able to read. He blinked bemusedly, shaking his head.
"I didn't catch that," he told him. "Can you repeat–?"
Draco's eyes had been too caught up on the corners of Potter’s lips to notice a slight shift between them. He looked down when a strange sensation tickled at his wrist. Like a memory of soft touch, Potter’s finger traced the lifeline of Draco’s palm, then down to his too-thin wrists.
Draco couldn’t feel Potter’s fingertips, not really. His body still lit up with gooseflesh and a rolling shiver as if he did.
He’s touching me, willingly, gently. Draco bit back a trembling inhale. For the first time.
Potter’s finger halted over a bruise, blooming just below the place where his crisp, ironed cuffs settled. In his peripheral vision, Draco could see that mess of black hair tilt upwards, and he knew that those green eyes were boring into his face.
The purple of the bruise suddenly looked very dark; a violent violet.
“Nothing," Draco rushed out in a dry whisper. “That’s nothing.” He tried for a smile, still unable to meet those eyes.
Draco saw a hand move towards him out of the corner of his eyes. He braced against it, but nothing helped the shudder that seized him when the faint warmth prickled at the hollow of his cheek. And his heart gave a sore, icky thump.
He looked at Potter again, terrified that the past few months of jeers, shoves, hexes, spittle, and strikes showed in his features. He was terrified Potter could see it.
“Nothing,” he whispered again.
Draco’s pain was naught in the face of what sat before him – his complaints and grievances folly compared to what Potter had been forced to suffer. He didn’t get to pity himself, and Draco would not let Potter attempt to soothe those wounds. Not when no one had soothed Potter’s.
Not when I’ve had a hand in that hurt.
Potter held his gaze and slowly shook his head. Not nothing – something. Something you don’t deserve.
“I have earned it. This and more," Draco stated, stoic in the face of Potter’s intense protest. “If we are speaking of what is deserved, and what is not, then look no further than yourself Potter.” Draco swallowed audibly. “You gave everything. You saved everyone – in my case on several occasions. A saviour in the truest sense, and yet none of us deserved to live. Not if the price was your life. Not when it meant someone like you dying.”
The sensation on both Draco’s wrist and cheek grew steadfast, as did the shaking of Potter’s head.
“What you did for me? That’s what I didn’t deserve Harry.” Uttering Potter’s given name made his throat tighten so much that it felt like choking. “Harry.” He said it again, simply because he had never done so before then.
Draco, Harry's lips shaped around his name back, softly, head cocked slightly.
His fingers brushed over Draco's hands again. Draco wished he could feel him, wished he could feel the life and warmth of him when he was alive again. But he was not alive, and he could not. Harry smiled, and again, like a soundless whisper, Draco. Again, his touch phantasmal and feather light as he traced up the veins of his wrists, passing over the bruise on his skin.
Then something wet and wretched rolled down Draco’s cheek.
::
A mild ache had started down in Draco's chest, persisting through all of his classes. By afternoon, it had grown into a steady throb, an occasional spike of pain shooting through his sternum and making him wince sharply. Goyle noticed as they walked back to the dorm and asked him if he was alright.
"Fine," Draco muttered, trying to regain his bearings as he blinked hard. "Just an ache."
Goyle got him a painkiller potion from Madame Pomfrey, settled down beside him and flipped through a magazine. It made him drowsy after a quarter of an hour, and he fell asleep on the settee, hands loosening around his Transfiguration textbook. When he woke up around evening, the pain had receded almost completely. Goyle wasn't there.
He didn't notice it at first. He didn't notice it at all, in fact, through his trip down to the library, planning on continuing his studying for the Transfiguration test tomorrow there.
It was only when he was sat down at a table that he noticed; the faintest imprints on the table, colours so faded they were nearly indecipherable, but Draco scrutinised them closely until he could name them.
There were footprints on the floor when he looked closer, just as faint. His head hurt from the strain of trying to see them. He looked around to see if anybody else had noticed them. There were a few Ravenclaw students on another table, a Hufflepuff with a Gryffindor on another. None of them had noticed. Perhaps they were not there where they're sitting. He looked down again at the ground and realised that the footprints were leading to a trail.
Draco moved to stand, to follow the set of footsteps that seemed to walk out from under the chair he was sitting in. But as he rose, pain spiked through his chest, like a sharp pick on ice. However, this time it did not cease. In fact, it built until Draco’s vision was pulsing with it.
With a silent whimper, Draco folded his arms on the table and slumped down into them. He sat trying to breathe through it, trying to form a shout to call for help. Neither worked. A hot wetness streamed from Draco’s nose. Instinctually, he wiped at it, only for his hand to come away a deep, dark red before a coppery tang filled his mouth.
Draco’s mind then seemed to grasp the seriousness of his circumstances and then ran wild. Had he been cursed? Hexed? He tried to think back to the last thing he ate and then realised he hadn’t in quite some time. Did he drink one too many Calming Draughts? Draco hadn’t thought so – but on an empty stomach?
As more blood streamed, too quick for him to wipe it, Draco looked around quickly, trying to get himself to move though in his panic. He’d frozen still.
“Fuck – Help!” Draco garbled. What was meant to be a shout came out a mere murmur instead.
The pain had morphed into agony, and it spread down his person. Reaching into even the smallest of places inside him, his strength left, and Draco’s head fell to crack off of the desk.
Silently, he fell down into a fragile state of mind, neither alert nor entirely gone. His head felt as if someone was shaking and spinning him in tandem and he wanted it to stop. He’d give anything for it to stop.
Then a shape moved towards him. He strained his eyes to look up and saw Harry staring at him, pale and anxious. Harry looked around, as if to call out to others.
No one will come, Potter. No one will come for me. The realisation threw Draco into deeper terror.
‘Help.’ Draco mouthed, his gasps rasping as tears flowed down to the blood on the desk. His hands then searched for Harry’s form, to touch it, to grasp it. But his fingers met only cooler air and a slight buzzing sensation under his nails.
Harry, it seemed, could do nothing either, except watch with a somewhat horrified expression. Draco’s rather unhelpful mind offered that the experience was somewhat lacking a certain je ne sais quoi without Moaning Myrtles wailing and a flooded abandoned bathroom to artfully bleed out on. Draco thought Harry looked as helpless then as he did now, but now there was no Severus to save his miserable hide. Draco was full of pain and longing for his Godfather to be with him.
...Or Harry. But, both of them are dead. Then a terrible calm flooded him. And I could be soon, his now too-still mind adds.
Despite his thudding heart and nausea, he smiled wretchedly at his worried ghost.
‘It’s okay.’ Draco mouthed wetly, having no air in his lungs to sound it. Harry’s eyes brimmed, and Draco wished for nothing except to be able to hold that warm-looking hand, closed so tight the knuckles were bone-white.
Draco’s vision and the pain – blessedly – dimmed. He looked up, still smiling at the boy in front of him, and thought, it might not be so bad if I don’t wake up again.
::
It was far, far too bright when Draco tried to pry his eyes open.
Where am I?
The first attempt to unstick his eyelids resulted in a short, sharp pain through his skull, the second equally ill-advised. In fact, merely sitting was quickly becoming a pipe dream as Draco realised that every muscle in his body ached. His chest burned. Hence, he didn’t try for a third and relaxed totally when he heard Madam Pomfrey’s muttering. He was breathing in the lemon-lavender scent of the sheets when she finally pottered to Draco after telling of a first year off for slapping an exploding snap card against his own forehead.
“Awake Mr Malfoy?” she asked in her normal, no-nonsense manner.
“Barely," he croaked, the act of speaking causing another wave of ice-pick headache. “Too bright.” Draco attempted to growl when the mediwitch pushed his curtains opening, letting even more bleach-yellow sun in.
“Well, it seems that you are back with us," she stated in a clipped tone, each harsh consonant grating on Draco’s molars.
“Brilliantly deduced," Draco said waspishly, trying to hide from the burning light.
Thankfully, the witch took pity and closed the curtains again – even added some sort of black-out charm on the fabric for good measure. He sighed – moaned – when the light finally stopped stabbing his eyelids. If Draco were so inclined, he might have kissed her feet.
“Thank you," he forced out, despite the discomfort.
“Oh dear. Definitely something serious. A head injury perhaps? No, hm.” She muttered to herself.
Draco had to abort the eye-roll quickly if he wanted to keep from whimpering like an infant.
“I don’t think gratitude is a symptom, Ma’am," Draco said through clenched teeth and a now sweaty brow.
The witch snorted. “Perhaps not...if it came under the purview of ‘normal, typical behaviour.’”
“Merlin. Right, point taken. Now will you get on with it and tell me what’s wrong? Oh, benevolent healer," he parried. Draco inched an eye open to glare at Madam Pomfrey only to see the mediwitch smother a small smile.
A small movement at the bottom of the bed caught his eye. Draco turned to see Potter perched on the foot board. It might have been strange to see your now departed, once-nemesis sitting at the end of your bed. And it was, except Potter’s expression was even more strange.
Potter looked ill.
“Your magic has been...waning Mr Malfoy.” Pomfrey began, the sombre edge to her tone made Draco turn to stare at her and a cold sensation creep up his throat.
Draco found Potter staring right at him. The intensity of it had him transfixed but also suddenly sitting up straight. He’d seen Potter like this before, many times, enough to know he should be nervous. Because, if Potter was looking at you like that, then it meant something bad was underway, and there was little you could do to stop it.
Her frown deepened when she gazed at Draco.
“Apart from the head pain and the bleeding, have you been experiencing any other symptoms?” Then after a pause, she added, “Anything unusual?”
“No," he said quickly, although his mind thought seeing a dead boy nigh on constantly might have been a cause for concern. But even if it was a delusion, a sickness of the mind, Draco would rather keep it than be cured of it. The notion of being without these visions made Draco feel cold and panicked. “Well, chest pain, maybe.”
Pomfrey made a note, her expression darkening for a moment.
“You are sure that’s all?” Pomfrey pried. Clever as she was, she wasn’t convinced at all.
“...Tiredness?” he offered, trying not to look as if he is hiding something from a very keen-eyed witch.
A short sharp movement to his left, and then Harry was in Draco’s face. Trying not to flinch, he quickly looked to Harry. Draco did flinch then, Harry looked furious. Harry was mouthing words, slowly, and Draco swore he could feel the bass of the growl which would have sounded otherwise.
“Tell her," Harry said, getting right into Draco’s eyeline, with nought but an inch between them. “Tell her.” He kept repeating, the tendons of his next raised, as if he’d screamed it.
Draco turned away from the livid boy. He shook his head minutely, nervous.
Something in his gut told him that he shouldn’t, not if he wanted to keep Harry. All magic had a cost; and Draco suspected that keeping your own personal apparition of the Chosen One might be somewhat magically taxing. And, if that was the price for having Harry here, even this raging version of him, Draco would take it, no questions asked.
Thinking on it, Draco would do anything to keep Harry here. And he’d already wasted too much time without Harry.
Pomfrey simply huffed, shoving a pain potion in his hand. Draco took it gratefully and downed it fast. The potions' effects were immediate, and Draco suddenly felt as if he was walking on air.
“Hmm. Well, you seem to have magical exhaustion," she said as her eyes still searched his face. For what, Draco wasn’t sure. “Your wand was checked, and no spell listed accounts for your symptoms. Thus, we will be keeping a close eye on you from now on. At the moment, your core is stable. So, you are free to return to your–”
Pomfrey hadn’t even finished when Draco stood up, retrieved his wand, clothes and satchel before spelling them on his person.
"–dormitory,” Madam Pomfrey finished with a pinched frown. “Mister Malfoy.” She halted him.
Draco turned, bouncing on the balls of his feet slightly. The pain potion invigorated him and gave him the sensation of being lighter than air all at the same time.
Pomfrey was fidgeting, tapping her wand off her thigh, and it struck Draco as one of the oddest things he’d ever witnessed. Pomfrey was economic in everything she did; every movement and every breath were exacted purposefully and with the least fuss. So, to see her exhibit such a nervous tick made Draco very nervous.
She sighed before continuing, “I have had the honour of treating many patients, with a great number of complaints–some more serious than others. Some rare – some unheard of even within my field, even after so many decades.”
The mediwitch then folded her arms as if hugging herself. She walked closer to Draco, whose heart was now beginning to thud with achy pain again.
“Recently, I’ve treated some of the most bizarre cases of my career. Some might argue the most tragic.” Pomfrey had this faraway look in her eye before she returned to Draco. “You see, war is terrible, death is terrible – it leaves scars in its survivors. It tears people apart...and sometimes that has unforeseen consequences. Awful, awful consequences. Especially among our kind.”
Draco saw Potter still sitting on the bed then. His head was in his hands, and he was curled in on himself. Potter had his eyes closed as if he was in pain.
“Several patients come to mind, two in particular. One was an older woman who was trying to find her daughter during the Battle, the other was a young boy–second year. Both came to me with symptoms much like your own. I would hear them whispering to themselves in the dark. They’d always be distracted, watching something out of the corner of their eye. They’d murmur a person’s name, over and over. All the while, their magic was draining – dying.”
Pomfrey wrung her hands and Draco had to force himself to hold her gaze and not stare at the boy sitting behind her.
“We can treat it.” Pomfrey stared at him imploringly. “Otherwise, without magic...no one survives that.”
Draco felt himself pale. His traitorous eyes sought Harry out. Green eyes stared right back at him, burning and red-rimmed.
“And with treatment – the symptoms – " Draco croaked. “They stopped entirely?”
Pomfrey seemed to understand what he was asking and looked at him with an awful amount of pity.
“Yes. Though, from what I understand, death was apparently preferable. And that is not something I say lightly as a Healer.”
Draco stood, silent and stunned. However, a small part of him had known this already. He knew that he couldn’t be so lucky as to have Harry without anything going horribly wrong in the process. True, uninhibited joy was not without sacrifice. It never had been for him.
He drank in his fill of the boy in question. He tried to imagine being ‘cured’ of this, of being cut off from this wondrous, wonderful thing. He couldn’t. It didn’t bear thinking about. It dawned on him then how deep he’d fallen into the wanting needy thing inside him.
Potter bit his lip. It was trembling as were his fists. The defeated look Potter gave him clued Draco into how he must have looked then; a man who was ready to burn.
He caught Pomfrey following his gaze, her expression tense with concern.
“That does sound tragic, Madam Pomfrey. My condolences to the victims and their loved ones," Draco said carefully. As he did, he also gave his answer to the issue Pomfrey was tiptoeing around.
Draco didn’t want to be treated; he didn’t want Pomfrey’s duty-bound interference. He would keep Harry, for as long as possible, even if it meant he’d have to die to do so. Harry was shaking his head slowly, Draco couldn’t make out the words that were spilling from Harry’s lips.
All he could think of was what little time he might have left with him.
“But perhaps, the real tragedy would be continuing on without–” Draco swallowed, not able to say it aloud. “That truly sounds like dying.”
“You might be right, Mister Malfoy.” Pomfrey regarded him stoically, though the tightness around her eyes betrayed her.
“Yes – well. Thank you. I’ll just – ” Draco then all but ran from the infirmary.
::
Draco’s chest still ached as he walked quickly through the maze of Hogwarts Halls, down several flights of stairs, past the kitchens and the Great Hall and then swiftly out the entrance. His breaths are a laboured wheezing in the cool evening air. Each inhale pushed a sharp spike of pain through his torso, so much so that he’d hunched over, holding himself.
He could feel more than see Harry walking silently behind him. Draco didn’t look back. He just kept moving forward with purpose as another ugly feeling bloomed in his chest.
The sensation of crawling inside his own skin had Draco rolling his neck in discomfort and clenching his fists until the whites of his knuckles turned blue. He moved over the expansive Hogwarts grounds with hastened strides to the edge of the grounds. The Quidditch pitch towers slowly came into view.
Soon, they loomed over him from all sides. He took a moment to look around at the stands, making sure they were empty.
Slowly, a tear fell, and before he knew it, a scream tore out of him. Even to Draco’s ears, it was an awful sound, one that made his ribcage burn and shake, his throat pained and raw.
There was too much inside of him; the sickness, the wayward stares, the hushed voices, the violent shoves, and cruel hexes to his back. He thought to himself, no one cared, no one would have cared. Draco could have died and the world would have looked at his carcass, poked at it a bit, before turning away disgusted. His body wouldn’t have even cooled before they had said ‘Yes, there – see there? That’s Draco Malfoy, the boy who should have died. The boy who didn’t deserve to live.’
Draco would have to agree with them. He closed his eyes to the sensation of something standing right behind him, and the shivers the near touch was causing. Turning around wasn’t an option. Looking at Harry right then would have been an agony. Harry was a boy who didn’t live, who hadn’t deserved to die.
His vision was blurred, but upon staring at the earth beneath him, he began quickly swiping his eyes to clear them. On the grass, there were patches of green, the most vivid kind Draco had ever seen. It was so bright – nay luminous – that it made everything around it dull and lifeless in comparison.
Draco suddenly recalled the books and the footprints in the library before he passed out. He remembered how red Harry’s defence textbook had been and the bright ochre of the prints on the wooden planks beneath his feet.
Looking down at the ground again, he realised that these were prints too. Looking around, he saw that there were hundreds of them. Some pointed away from Draco, others away – there were loads in the distance that seemed to begin without origin and abruptly stop.
He began following the set at his feet. Step-for-step, he moved with them to where the print concentrated at the boy’s Quidditch locker room. His breath picked up as he entered the room, still foggy and damp from Hufflepuff's scheduled Wednesday evening practise.
The floor in here was lit up like a beacon.
Colours dominated the floor, in bright paths that seemed to connect the door to a couple of shower cubicles and then back round again to a set of lockers on the far left of the room. The Gryffindor rows. Draco wondered if he had ever seen colours so bright.
He walked up to them, to where the prints almost pointed like an arrow. Standing in front of the pale red doors, he squinted to read the names written. Following the footprints further led him to a set of lockers hidden in shadow.
Draco’s heart lurched when he found everlasting flowers and a solitary candle under one.
It was a shrine of sorts. Hundreds of small notes and pictures of Harry with others had been stuck to the locker door and the floor directly beneath it. There was a palpable protection charm encasing it, as if many had been layered upon each other to keep the items safe from prying hands and the humid air in the showers.
His stomach dropped when he read the name under the wreath penned in a sharp, jutting script; Harry Potter, Seeker, Gryffindor Quidditch Captain.
He stood staring at it, his breaths suddenly feeling quite thick in his throat. His fingers reached out gently to run over the words Harry had written. He closed his eyes at the sensation, knowing that he now stood where Harry once had.
Where Harry had once stood…
Then, with a shock he pivoted, his eyes flicking from footprint to footprint. All of them coming to and away from where Draco stood.
“They’re yours,” Draco whispered, awed. “They are yours.” He breathed excitedly.
He then followed them, tracing them as a pup would his own tail – with abandon and utter glee.
They took him to a shower which he stood in, his hands roaming all over the tiles. They took him out to the pitch where Draco leapt from where one set began and another suddenly vanished – all of them kick-offs and landings from Quidditch. He trailed them back up to the castle whilst completely dismissing his wheezing.
Thousands. Thousands of footprints gleamed in bright little paths over Hogwarts’ rolling hills and dales. It looked as if thousands of fireflies were marching, or as if stars had become earth-bound instead of encrusted in the heavens.
Draco laughed, the elation of his discovery filling his chest up so much he felt he might be glowing too.
He then froze under another realisation. Taking out his wand, he realised that it too was far brighter than anything else framing it. Transfixed, Draco stared as a grin crept up on his features. This was proof that Harry had lived, that he had been here, that the earth still had him inked upon it.
If it shows on the wand – maybe…
Draco pushed back his sleeve, almost tearing it. There was a patch of bright, pale skin, shining as if lit from within. Draco quickly pocketed his wand and, holding his breath, he ran a finger over the shape on his forearm.
This was new. He was sure it hadn’t been there that morning.
It was Harry’s. It was Harry’s mark upon him, bright and blazing where the Dark Lord’s mark was sickly and swallowed light.
He regarded tremulously, holding his own arm as if it was something sacred to him. Before he could think better of it, he brought it to his lips and kissed it softly.
When he opened his eyes, he saw Harry standing across from him, all light and colour.
“You’re here. You are still here," Draco said quietly.
Harry stood with his hands in his jean pockets. He looked around at the footprints, his eyes roaming, until they finally landed where Draco had rolled up his own sleeve. Harry nodded slowly, biting his lip. Worry marred his features, and anxiety left him in droves. He stared at Draco’s arm where his handprint had branded him, proof that Harry was real – that he’d once touched Draco.
Draco slowly moved towards him, hardly blinking as he stared at the complicated set of emotions Harry bared to him.
He swallowed around his next words, scared of how far away those green irises seemed.
“You are still here with me, Harry. There...it... I can’t tell you how much it–”
Draco struggled to voice the deep rumble of happiness, fear, wanting, and need that was rolling through him in that moment.
“I lost you,” is what finally escaped his tight throat. “Before I ever got to have you.”
Draco felt a cool pressure on his cheek, and he startled at how close Harry’ face was to his now.
You have me, he mouthed, his finger pointing at Draco, then at his own chest.
“Not here. Not really. And I want you to – I want you with me. But you're already gone. You shouldn’t be gone. Not when I’m still…” It was difficult to tether himself, to return to the quiet contentment he’d felt before he started seeing this boy in the shadows once more.
Now, except for where the footprints laid.
Harry then attempted to take Draco’s hands, before visibly growing frustrated that he couldn’t. Draco humoured him and held up his arms, which Harry’s transparent hands brushed through. It caused Draco to shiver a little when he felt the coolness of Harry’s touch deep in his forearms.
He looked at Draco then, dead on. His head was shaking slowly, and his mouth was set in a grim line.
This is bad, was what Draco thought Harry just mouthed.
"Bad? How can this be bad? It’s –'" Draco swallowed deeply as his eyes fell on the colours surrounding them. "–beautiful." He breathed, his chest swelling with emotion.
Harry’s frown deepened before he backed away from Draco by a few steps. Draco stepped forward, worried about the expression that crossed Harry's features.
‘Where are you going?’ Draco asked softly. The sound of it belied the anxiety which was creepin up on him.
Harry was doing nothing except shaking his head and putting distance between him. His face looked panicked, like Draco had done something that had scared him. Draco came closer to him, his hand reaching out. He realised that Harry was saying something, repeating it every few steps, his eyes glazed.
I’m hurting you.
Draco gestured for Harry to stop, but he kept moving. If it were possible, Draco could have sworn Harry had become paler then.
‘You’re not Harry. What you’re doing is the furthest thing from hurting me.’
Harry didn’t listen. Instead, he fisted his hair, his mouth opening as if he was shouting. He suddenly stopped, his face smoothing as if his mind had suddenly settled on something before turning to Draco.
I’m sorry.
‘Sorry? Harry, what–?’
But then in a blink, Harry was gone and Draco was left alone in hills full of the colour he stained into them.
"Harry?"
There was no answer.
"Harry!"
Looking around frantically, Draco hoped-wished-prayed he caught sight of him – but there was nothing.
‘Harry?’ Draco whispered, his voice terribly small.
But nothing happened, and Draco was alone again.
::
Hello chickens,
Another story, another cry fest making you sob snotty, snotty tears.
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This is a joint venture by RewriteParagraph and Alxmeg!
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