Wilted

by thewakeless

Summary:

After Harry dies in the Battle of Hogwarts Draco is determined to bring him back to life, by any means necessary.

Notes:

Warning: This fic is not for the faint of heart

betad by @ahhhnorealnamesallowed

Chapter 1

“Once upon a time, centuries and centuries ago there lived a man named Cepheus Black,” began Narcissa, soft pale fingers running through her son’s platinum blonde hair.  “He was remarkably gifted, and he had a vision of what he wanted in life.  When he was only a teenager, not much older than you are now, he snuck into a muggle castle, and enchanted and fought every occupant, wiping their memories and making them subservient to him.

“He then became Lord of this Castle, but that was only the beginning of what Cepheus wanted for himself.  He was one of the first in our family to attend Hogwarts but he, like many, was disappointed with its teachings.  He felt that the school lowered itself and simplified its instruction to appeal to the mudbloods.  And now that he had his freedom, he wanted a taste of real magic.”

At these words she paused, staring deep into Draco’s grey eyes, eliciting a question from him: “And where do you find real magic, mum?”

“In the old places,” she whispered.  “And Cepheus travelled through all of them.  The Pike mountains in the north, the Snowden to the East, he even went to the continent.  In his travels he acquired more knowledge and more magic than any living wizard. And when he returned to his castle, he was no longer alone.

“He found two dragons and brought them home with him.  It is rare for any wizard to truly tame a dragon, but Cepheus could extend his will over them perfectly.  They obeyed him with the same loyalty and devotion as you’d find in a hound.  But he also came with someone else – can you guess?”

Draco grinned.  He knew his mother’s stories well enough.  “A princess,” he said with certainty. 

“Yes,” Narcissa grinned.  “A very beautiful princess, with long blonde hair.”

“Like you?”

“Like both of us,” she said lovingly stroking his hair.  “Aren’t we the same you and I? Don’t we look so much alike?”  Catching his own reflection in the grey of her eyes, he nodded. 

“And what was her name?”

“It’s been lost, Draco, like so many things in the old world.  But she and Cepheus were remarkably happy.  Their dragons guarded their castle, and they had a village of muggles to worship them, to bring them offerings, to bow to their wishes.  And as the years passed Cepheus’s magic grew strong and stronger.  It is said that he could turn himself invisible, that he could fly through the air formless a cloud.  He could turn himself – not only into one animal like a common Animagus – but into any animal he chose.  His powers were boundless – or so he thought –

“For one day, when he was away, a band of wizards came into the village.  They were the children he had grown up with at Hogwarts and they believed in a very different world than he did.  They said they had come to ‘liberate’ the village, but that was just rhetoric; really, they had come to destroy.  As they liberated the village, they crushed it, and sent the muggles fleeing.  As they liberated the Castle, they slayed the dragons, fearing their power and superiority.  But they did not stop there.  They claimed that the beautiful Princess had been bewitched by Cepheus, that he had stolen her from her father in the dead of the night.  That she did not belong to him, and so they took her, too.”

“Where did they take her?”

“Far, far away, to a secret tower in the ruins of an old castle.  And there she wept and wilted.”

Draco gripped her arm.  “Did Cepheus find her? Did he rescue her? Did he kill all those bad people?”

“One by one he went through his adversaries.  He sought them out in their strongholds and performed magic so potent we can barely conceive of it.  It’s said that he tore down entire castles with a word.  That he had spells to stop a man’s blood from coursing through his body.  It is said he dueled 10 men at once and killed them all.  Some even say that it was he who created the Avada Kedavra curse.  And as each of his enemies fell, he got closer to finding his Princess again – but years were spent in battles, years were spent getting information of her whereabouts.”

“He didn’t rescue her?”

“Oh, he did.  At last, after single handedly defeating an entire Kingdom, he found her secret tower.  He flew up to the window, rejoicing in having found his beloved again.  But do you know what he found Draco?”

Draco’s eyes had gone wide and he shook his head, a nasty feeling beginning in the pit of his stomach. 

“He found a corpse where his wife should have been.”

“She was dead?”

“Yes, she had died years before, waiting for him.  Cepheus stumbled into the room and collapsed at the base of her bed.  He thought himself defeated.  Castles can be built again.  And new dragons may hatch.  But one’s love is irreplaceable.”

Draco sat up and looked crossly at his mother.  “But what happened? Is that the end of the story?”

“Do you think it’s the end?”

“No!” he answered defiantly.  “He could fly, and tame dragons, and turn into any animal, and he could fight 10 men at once, and stop a man’s blood.  That can’t be the end.”

A proud sort of smile came to Narcissa’s lips.  “What a clever boy you are Draco.”

He beamed and pulled on the sleeve of her black velvet dress. “What did he do? Did he bring her back from the dead?”

“He did.  He was the most powerful wizard of his age, maybe the most powerful wizard to ever live.  He was a master at killing, and he became in time a master of death too.  He came up with a counterpart spell for Avada Kedavra.  A spell to breath life back into the dead.”

“I knew it!”

“Yes, you did, my clever boy,” she kissed the top of his head. 

“And were they happy? Did they get another castle?”

She was quiet for a moment, and he looked up at her expectantly.  However, it was always impossible to read his mother. “The laws of nature can be broken by powerful magic, but breaking them has consequences.  Cepheus brought his wife back to the land of the living, but she was not the same as before.  She could walk beside him, and fly in his arms, and converse with him about all she had seen in the dark world, but she was not the same.  Cepheus had managed to bring back her essence, to reanimate her limbs, but she had no soul, and her form was not like one of the living.”

“What does that mean?”

“That she was brought back only in halves – that she was living but also dead – that she was herself, but also something empty and dark.”

Draco gulped and inched a little closer to his mum.  He didn’t like the image of the haggard woman in his mind.  “And Cepheus couldn’t heal her?”

“No, he could not.”

“What did he do then?”

“He loved her.  He surrendered everything in the world for her.  They had no more castles, no more subservient muggles, no more dragons. Instead they moved from old place to old place, with nothing but one another.  For other wizards thought what he had done was wicked, and they wanted to hunt for them, to slay them.”

“But he only did it because he loved her.”

“I know, darling” she pressed him closer to her.  “But how can you expect mudbloods, and half-bloods, to understand how we love.  To understand that when we love nothing could stand between us, not even death? They do not feel things like we do.”

“If father died would you bring him back?”

“Unfortunately, this magic has been lost for a long time, barred from being written by those like Albus Dumbledore who separate magic arbitrarily into good and dark.”

“But if you could?”

“If I had the power to? Then yes, of course, I have no desire to exist without him.”

Draco was quiet.  He loved hearing stories about their family.  About ancestors who had been great Quidditch players, or Ministers of Magic, or who had fought against the discrimination that wizards faced at the hands of the muggle majority.  But this felt like a very different kind of story.  “Do you think they were happy?”

“Oh yes, the legend tells us that they lived a hundred years together.  That he learned so much from her, and that he cared for her every day of his life.  He is supposed to be buried somewhere in the mountains of Scotland, and they say there is a spellbook there, buried with him.”

Draco sat up.  “A spell book?”

“Yes, his life’s work, it detailed all the magic he learned..”

“Like how to turn into any animal? And how to fly?”

“Yes.”

She fell quiet, as if this was the end of her story.  Next to her Draco frowned and pressed a hand to her forearm, pressing against the warmth of her skin.  He needed to hear more. 

“Many people have sought it, my own father among them, but nobody has found it yet-”  she was quiet for a moment, and then she added.  “It would take a very great and very clever wizard to find Cepheus’s grave, don’t you think?”

“Do you think I could find it?”

She poked the tip of his nose.  “I think you could do anything you wanted; you have greatness in your blood.”

-

Draco had been eight years old the first time he heard Cepheus’s story.  After his initial apprehension it became one of his favorites.  He would request it night after night.  He would beg his mother for details of his battles, and how he had tamed his dragons, and she provided them, either from memory or invention, he was never certain.  By the time he was Hogwarts age, his great ambition was to be the first to find Cepheus’s grave and the first to master all his secrets. 

However, quickly enough other interests took precedence.  Quidditch, and Potter; his studies, and Potter; keeping a dedicated band of followers, and Potter.  It was a lot of work, actually, and the longer he spent away from his mother, the more he saw her stories as nothing more than old wizarding fairy tales.  In reality no wizard, no matter how great, could fly, or transform into any animal, or raise the dead.  That was kids’ stuff.  And Draco had more important things on his mind. 

It was only in 5th year that the story came back to him.  He was on Prefect duty, walking down the long trophy room when something caught his attention.  It was an old plaque, the metal dingy, the inscription hard to make out, but it bore the familiar Black family crest.  Draco tapped it with his wand to get the dinge off.  It was an award for Highest Standard of Magical Excellence, and it was made out to Cepheus Draconis Black 1490.

He stood in that hallway for a long time, thinking of his mother, and the little boy he had been when she told him all these stories about their family.  He reached out to touch the plaque.  Had Cepheus held it? Had he been the person to put it here? Had other Blacks found it through the ages? Searching for any evidence of this greatest of all ancestors?

When he returned to his mother that Christmas, he told her about it.  It did not seem to affect her in any way, perhaps there was too much happening in the present for her to think about the past like she used to.  “Did you know his middle name was Draconis?” he asked her instead.

The only answer he got was a smile. 

After that the story of Cepheus faded from his memory once more.  There was so much else happening, and he had to keep his wits about him.  There was no time to be wasted on old fables, even if they did have half truths in them.

-

During his childhood, Malfoy Manor had been a place of comfort and opulence.  Now everything in it was tainted.  It was here that they had been prisoners, and it was here that they had been punished.  The three of them returned to the house after the battle together, grateful for a moment of peace, and grateful for a narrow victory.  But it was not the place of old.  The opulence had wilted, the comfort vanished. 

As soon as they arrived Draco shut himself up in his old room.  He fell into bed, staring up at the vaulted ceiling above him.  His body felt weak and wobbly, and everything in the world was wrong.  He could still remember Potter’s arms around him as they flew together out of the blaze that engulfed the Room of Requirement.  He could still feel the warmth of Potter’s voice, hear his shouts in his ear.  He had gone out of his way to rescue Draco; he had reached out and pulled him from literal hellfire.  And all this mere hours before.  How could it possibly be that he was now dead?

The silence of the room hurt him.  The new serenity that engulfed Malfoy Manor felt undeserved.  He shut his eyes.  He should have died.  There had been no reason for Potter to rescue him, so why had he done it? Why hadn’t he let fate work its course?

“Because he is a fucking hero,” Draco said out loud, the words bitter and resentful to his own ears.  But there had to be an alteration made. Potter is not anything anymore. Potter was a hero. Potter had been many things.  He let that thought rest with him as he closed his eyes.  It had been a long 36 hours, a long battle, a long year. 

His body was exhausted, and he wanted to sleep, to drift away, to go somewhere he didn’t have to consider what life without Potter would really be like.  In practicality nothing would change of course, they had been enemies after all, but in every other way his world would be different now. 

He had spent his childhood orbiting around his parents and the hereditary traditions of both illustrious families.  He had spent all those years learning to be as couth as a Malfoy and as enigmatic as a Black.  He was the last of both lines, the singular heir to two great magical lineages.  But that felt like so long ago, a distant time, because for many years now Potter had been the focal point of his life. 

Since he started at Hogwarts his world had revolved around the other boy.  Outdoing him where he could, fighting him when he had to, being his counterpart, his rival. Almost every choice he had ever made over the last 7 years had somehow been linked to Potter.  And now what? What was he supposed to do?

He turned over on the bed, laying down on his stomach.  The Slytherin crest had been intricately carved above his bed.  He stared at the eye of the snake and a shiver ran through his spine.  He had spent far too much time with Nagini not to be apprehensive of serpents.  For a moment he wondered if he should put something over the crest, an old sheet, or a tapestry.  He didn’t like that snake looking down on him.

Abruptly he rose from the bed and walked over to the window.  From here he could look down at the extensive Malfoy gardens.  They had, of course, seen better times.  His father had had little time to care for things as he usually would.  The place was overgrown, and not the luscious green he remembered.  Everything was a little dry, a little dead.  He wondered where the peacocks had gone, he hadn’t seen them for weeks.  Perhaps they had made a valiant escape right under the nose of the Death Eaters, like Potter had. 

 He took a step back from the window.  It was strange to think that Potter had been here.  That he had seen their home.  Had he noticed the gardens? Had he seen any of his father’s albino peacocks? Had he noticed the large family portrait that hung over the hearth? The one that showed him at seven years old, standing solemn between his parents, one of their white hands at each of his shoulders?

With sudden resolution he walked out of his bedroom and down several flights of stairs. As he went the portraits of his ancestors followed, some of them calling out to him, nosy as ever.  He had grown up with their voices in the back of his head, never quite alone, never quite himself.  He walked all the way to the dungeon without looking back, his footsteps echoing on the stone.

When he reached the dungeon, he found the door open.  They had had no prisoners since Potter’s escape.  He lit his wand and walked in, holding it high.  He wanted to see some proof of Potter's existence, perhaps a little piece of paper in his untidy hand.  Or a discarded jacket, a forgotten book, something.  The place, however, was empty.  There was nothing here to indicate the presence of prisoners, much less of the famous Harry Potter. 

What would have happened if he had been caught then?  If Draco had really handed him over, like he was supposed to? How would he feel then? Would Harry’s death seem more real to him? Would he have gotten the opportunity to actually watch him die? 

Draco slid to his knees on the dungeon floor.  He stared at the blank wall in front of him, nausea rising up from the pit of his stomach.  He was sick all over himself, gagging and hurling, the sounds monstrous in the echoing chamber.  And for a long time afterwards he stayed right there, filthy and empty.  Something had gone terribly wrong.  He was living and Harry Potter was dead and that was simply not how things were supposed to go. 

-

Weeks passed by.  Happy weeks.  Victorious weeks.  Every dream his parents had ever had was coming true.  The Dark Lord had positioned himself at the center of Wizarding England.  The blood traitors and the mudbloods had lost everything.  Dozens had been arrested, dozens killed, and others simply vanished, either fleeing to the remote regions of the globe, or taken in secret midnight raids.  The world was theirs and they were doing with it what they pleased.

For their role, and specifically for Narcissa’s part during the Battle, all three of them had returned to Voldemort’s favor.  His father had been granted an important position in the reformed 1st Ministry.  His mother and Aunt Bellatrix held highly coveted spots in the Dark Lord’s Council.  He, on the other hand, had been left mostly on his own.  His parents had requested that he be allowed to rest – they said that he had not recovered his strength, that he was sickly, that he had been injured during the battle. 

The truth was simpler, and more complex.  Draco had lost his appetite.  No matter what delicious morsels his mother had Diri prepare, nothing tempted him.  And what he did eat he would usually end up vomiting a few hours later.  His stomach was in revolt, and in consequence he grew weak and thin, deep shadows under his eyes. 

His mother spent all her free time nursing him, as if he were a small child again.  She would bring him meal-replacement potions and sit by his bed, telling him old stories, caressing his hair.  It was comforting and embarrassing all in one. He felt like a little boy again.  

How he would love to go back in time.  If he had the chance to do it all over, he would change almost everything.  Day after day he pictured himself at 11 years old, standing in Madame Malkin’s Robe Shop, Harry Potter on the stool next to him.  He had been wearing a sweater several sizes too big for him, and jeans with a tear at the knee, looking like someone his mother would call a ruffian. 

What if he had just said something else? What if he hadn’t talked about mudbloods?  What if he had actually asked Harry a question?  What if he had tried to be nice to him despite the fact he looked like a poor boy? Would everything be different, his whole life?

Sweating in his bed, he relieved year after year, altercation after altercation.  They had so much history together, and there had been so many opportunities for one of them to turn the tide. What would have happened if, instead of running away during their detention together in the Forbidden Forest, Draco had stayed with him? Would the fear have bonded them, as fear has a way of doing? What if Draco had approached him in second year and asked him how he became a parselmouth like he had wanted to?  Would that have led to an argument, or to an actual honest conversation between them?

Their years together were full of moments like these.  And in his naivete Draco had thought they would have so many more.  That they would always be as they had been – that his life would continue revolving around Potter, even into adulthood.  When they met again in Malfoy Manor or even in the Room of Requirement, it had felt like just another of their innumerable face offs.  He had never quite considered that it would be the last he would ever see of Harry Potter. 

The door of his bedroom was opened by magic and Narcissa came walking in.  “Hello darling,” she said kneeling by the side of his bed and brushing the hair away from his forehead. 

“Hi mum.”

“Did you sleep at all?”

The truth was he was not sure.  His dreams and his reality were intertwined, and both seemed to be full of nothing but Potter.  He made a shrugging gesture. 

“Do you want to try to eat something darling?” she said.  “Just a little broth?”

He shook his head, and saw her mouth tighten.  She was worried about him, they both were.  “What about a potion then, that ought to set you right?”

“In a bit,” he answered.  He moved up to a sitting position, feigning strength he did not have. 

“Mum, would you tell me a story?”

She beamed.  “Do you want to hear about Great Aunt Cassiopeia sinking submarines during the second muggle war?”

“No, I want to hear about Cepheus.”

For a moment he thought he detected some understanding in her eyes, as if she had known this was the story he really wanted, but a second later her face had become guarded again, a perfect, imperious mask.  “There are so many stories to tell about him, which one did you want?”

“The one about his wife.”

For a moment he thought that she was going to deny him.  That she was going to refuse to tell this story at this time.  But the hesitation (if there was really any hesitation) lasted only an instant.  She moved to the side of his bed, sitting just as she had when he was a boy.  Her dress folded neatly; her hands, beautiful and ringed, in her lap. 

“Once upon a time…” she began. 

-

In August, to his parent’s relief, his health took a turn for the better.  His diet was limited mostly to fruits and vegetables, occasionally some bread, or light soup, and all in moderate amounts.  But it was the start of something and they all sensed it.  Suddenly, he didn’t want to lie in bed all day.  He would get up with the sunrise and walk the gardens that his father was trying to restore to their former grandeur.  He was too weak to go far, but the fresh air invigorated him. 

They had taken to eating breakfast outside each morning, seated under a great white umbrella.  His mother’s meal became even more lavish than before, she offered every kind of dish available, to entice him into eating a bit more.  She had six or seven types of teas prepared, fresh bread, and home-made jams, and every fruit he could think of, laid out in beautiful colored patterns, like rainbow mosaics. 

“It is so good to see you doing better,” said Narcissa squeezing his hand under the table. 

“And when you are fully recovered,” Lucius would add. “The world is yours.  The Dark Lord has been most generous to us, his old loyal companions, you can have your pick of positions.”

“You could go back to Hogwarts to finish your last year,”  Narcissa would say, as if she had not heard her husband.  “I’m sure for all you have done for him, you would be made head boy at the very least.”

At first, he paid no attention to their talk about the future, but as he grew stronger, a new idea began to form in his mind.  It was not a clear plan, just a thought, hazy and wayward.  Sometimes it seemed ridiculous to him, the whimsical desires of an overgrown boy.  Other times it was frightening, and malicious, a dark thing that had to be hidden from others, even his parents. 

But slowly, day by day, the idea began to take shape, to grow stronger.  Now when he managed to eat a little more than usual he found himself thinking, good I have to be strong for my travels .  Or when he was getting dressed in the morning and looking through his vast collection of clothes, he would think what would be useful to bring with him.  And every night without fail when Narcissa came to see him, he would ask her to tell the story of Cepheus again, and again. 

It seemed to him with every retelling the story grew more vivid, more detailed, like a painting, gaining details with additional brushstrokes. 

Finally, midway through the month he told his parents his decision over breakfast.

“I know what I want to do-”

Both stopped their chatter about the new anti-mudblood laws at once. 

“I want to look for Cepheus’s grave.”

They looked at each other across the table.  “Why would you want to do that, darling?” said Narcissa, looking him over with wide grey eyes just like his. 

“For the Dark Lord,” Draco answered automatically. 

“What does some looney Black grail have to do with him?” said Lucius.

Narcissa snapped: “Please refrain from speaking about my family in that way.”

He straightened his posture and said in a stiff voice: “I’m sorry, my dear, I only meant that it has been lost for 500 years, and dozens have searched for it.  I do not think it is worthy of your time or attention Draco, much less the Dark Lord’s.”

“We won’t know that until we find it,” said Draco. 

They were both quiet, their faces betraying no emotion, no thought.  It was startling how much they looked like each other at this time, they could be brother and sister.  “Why do you want to find it?” said Narcissa. 

“Because you’ve filled his head with foolishness,” murmured Lucius under his breath. 

“Well-” began Draco.  “I am the last Black-” his father made a derisive noise.  “And you named me Draco.  The Dark Lord is starting a revival of the old ways, and the old magic, wouldn’t Cepheus’s teaching be a perfect fuel for it? Isn’t it-” he moved his eyes to meet his mothers.  “Don’t you think that this is my destiny?”

“Merlin’s beard-” said Lucius.  “Your destiny is here, everything is laid out for you to grab, you just have to reach out and take it.  And you want to run off into the mountains after an old spell book!”

Draco was preparing a retort, when Narcissa stepped in for him.  “My love-“ she said in her most docile tone.  “You make an excellent point-” she got up gracefully from her seat and moved across the grass to stand beside him, one of her hands on his shoulder.  “There are so many opportunities for Draco here,” her fingers caressed his long blonde hair, and Draco could see the tension leaving his shoulders.  “You have made such a place for our family,” her words were dipped in adoration. 

“I have,” said Lucius, as if it were really true. 

“When you were young you travelled as well-” she said soothingly.  “You went to the continent, remember? You became the jewel of Paris-” at these words a self-satisfied smirk came to his face, and Draco’s stomach lurched.  It was like looking into a mirror.  “I missed you so terribly, my love,” she said in a tone so intimate Draco found himself turning away.

“You were still at Hogwarts.”

“Yes, but you know very well I have loved you my entire life.”

He chuckled, and Draco had to physically restrain himself from being sick. 

“I think it’s important for young men to see the world a little, to travel.  It was important for you, wasn’t it?”

“But I was making connections, not gravedigging.”

“Well, thanks to your work Draco lacks no connections, does he?”

“I suppose not.”

“And it is an old tradition in my family, and you know how much that means to me.  I am proud to be a Malfoy, but I was born Narcissa Black, and I shall never forget that.”

“Nor should you, it’s an old magical family.”

She was about to make the kill, and Draco knew it.  He turned to look at them again.  “So, is it so wrong for Draco to go in search of it?”

Lucius was quiet, but the frown lines had disappeared from his forehead, and Draco was sure he was already won over.  “It would ultimately be the Dark Lord’s decision.”

“Of course!” she said, a pliant smile on her face.  “Would you like me to speak to him about this matter? Or would you prefer to do it yourself?”

Unmistakably, fear flashed through Lucius’s eyes.  They all knew how much he hated being alone with him.  “You do it.”

“I shall,” she gave his cheek a chaste kiss. “You’re very busy with the Ministry of course, it was silly of me to suggest it.”  She looked over at Draco conspiratorially.  “Is that agreeable to you darling?”

And all he had to do was nod.

-

Within 24 hours his mother had arranged it all. 

The Dark Lord has been intrigued by this quest and was allowing Draco to go off in search of it under the single condition that he report his progress to his parents on a weekly basis.  His mother provided all the necessities for the journey including clothing, provisions, a newly furnished 3-bedroom tent, and a bag with an extending charm.

She was in an excellent mood, and in private told him that she had always wished he would be the one to find Cepheus’s grave.  By contrast, Lucius was quiet.  He watched all this planning and activity suspiciously, as if it were a conspiracy against him. 

The day he was to leave they had a last breakfast together under a powder blue sky. In order to give them a greater peace of mind Draco ate more than he cared to.  When it was his time to leave, they walked with him all the way to the gates. 

Lucius embraced him and kissed his cheek.  Draco was surprised to see fear in his eyes, as if his father thought this might be their last moments together.  When they broke apart Narcissa reached out and grabbed his hand. 

“I am so proud of you, my darling, you know my father was just your age when he went on this quest as well.”

“Let’s hope he’s more successful than old Cygnus,” grumbled Lucius. 

Narcissa paid him no heed and continued.  “I have a gift for you before you go-”  she withdrew something long and silvery from her pocket. 

Draco knew what it was at once.  “Where did you get this?”

She smiled, serenely.  “The Dark Lord always repays loyalty.” She handed Harry’s cloak over to him.  “This is an old magical artifact, handed down from generation to generation, it belongs with an old wizarding family; it belongs with you.”

He took it with reverence, feeling the light material sliding through his fingers.  Did she know? Did she have some idea of what it was that he was seeking? Was that why she was handing this to him, something that for so long had belonged to the Potters?  However, if this was what she was thinking her face betrayed nothing, it was blank and beautiful like a doll’s.

“Thank you,” he said, tugging it into his bag. 

She pulled him into her arms and kissed each of his cheeks.  “Take care of yourself.”

“I will,” he assured her.

His parents looked formidable together, like pale marble statues.  He smiled at each of them and then he turned on the spot and apparated away.

Notes:

This is like nothing I have ever written before but as soon as I saw the prompt I knew I wanted to give it a try. Thank you so much @trigerlili for this wonderful idea that has given me so much pain and pleasure.

Thank you also to @lovestillaround for telling me about this fest and putting up with my endless rambles about this story.

And to my wonderful beta Billie who has been nothing but lovely and patient while dealing with my run on sentences and nonexistent knowledge of punctuation.

Chapter 2

He had expected to be anxious in the wilderness, instead he found a sort of peace.  There was no need to pretend anymore, and no one to please.  He spent the first week in a clearing in a forest, looking through the extensive notes and maps that generations of Blacks had left to guide him.  His grandfather Cygnus had been especially good at keeping track of all the places that he had already investigated, which of course would make Draco’s search easier (and hopefully more fruitful).   

In the evening he would walk around the forest in Harry’s old invisibility cloak.  He loved the feel of it against his skin, and every time he slipped it on, he thought of how often Harry had worn it, how many hours he had spent with it on.  Had it been with this cloak that he had found the Chamber of Secrets?  Had it been with this cloak that he used Umbridge’s fireplace?   

He replayed time and time again the two instances when he had actually seen Harry wearing it.  The first was when they were 13 and Harry had snuck into Hogsmeade.  It had been a chilly day in November and Harry, invisible, had thrown mud balls at him, Crabbe, and Goyle.  His aim was admittedly quite good, but then the cloak had slipped to reveal his face.  Draco still remembered it so perfectly.  The sunshine reflecting on his glasses, his cheeks flushed from the cold and the exercise, his mouth in a comical angle, like he had been caught right in the middle of a laugh.   

The second time had been in sixth year, when he had snuck into Draco’s compartment.  Draco had caught a glimpse of those filthy old trainers of his and then, when everybody left, he had cursed him.  He remembered taking the cloak off of his body, staring down at his stiff, petrified face, and those green eyes full of anger.  He had smashed Harry’s face, and thrown the cloak over him, hoping to have him sent off to London again, hoping to get him in trouble.   

It had been a childish moment, really.  It would have been better to take Harry straight to Voldemort.  So many things would have been different if he had…. But somehow in that instance it had not even occurred to him.  The Dark Mark was already branded into his skin, but he had never really managed to think like a Death Eater.  He had only thought of humiliating Harry, never of truly harming him.  

Of all the years they had lived together at Hogwarts it was 6th year that came back to haunt him the most.  He had been so desperate, so focused on completing his mission, on saving his family.  It was the first year where Harry was more obsessed with him than he had been with Harry.  He could feel the boy watching him.  He knew that he was being followed, observed, suspected.   

What would have happened if he had confronted him?  If he had opened up to him?  What would have happened that day in the bathroom?  He turned these thoughts over and over.  Always coming up with alternatives far better than the current reality.   

After the battle of Hogwarts, he had thought that a stage of his life had ended, that Potter was no longer at the center of all of his actions and decisions, but that wasn’t true, not really.  If anything, since the boy’s death Draco thought about him more than ever.  

It felt like falling.  Like grasping at shadows.   

Sometimes in the night he even found himself talking to Harry, as if he were a ghost in the room.  

“If only you weren’t such a heroic figure .  If only you didn’t have such crap taste in friends.  If only you’d asked for my help.   I would have helped you.  I would have.” 

And all of his sentences started with if… 

- 

It was during the second week that he started moving around the countryside.  His journeys were made through a mostly barren land, moving from one scenic place to another.  He surrounded himself with mountains, cliffs, and the edges of the sea.  At first, he went from place to place quickly, too quickly perhaps, rejecting it in a matter of minutes after a brief search.  Later, he thought better of it.  Old magic was hard to detect, it was subtle, and he found himself sorely ignorant of its ways.   

The magic he was now facing was nothing like the one he had learned at Hogwarts.  There was a huge gap in his education, and he was surprised by the fact that neither Narcissa nor Lucius had ever tried to teach him about this side of magic.  Old magic was not a simple spell and a wave of the wand.  It was potent and long lasting, born of a different age.  The spells were generally longer, more intricate incantations, and many could only be performed through rituals.   

In consequence of this he started staying in places longer, investigating them for days at a time before moving on.  He spent most of his time under the cloak, moving between trees, putting his palm against stones and mossy rocks.  Although he knew very little about old magic, there was something familiar in it.  Maybe it was because of his bloodlines, but old magic made the air feel different.  He could sense it when they were getting close to Hogwarts, a shift in the space about them.  It wasn’t a smell, it wasn’t a taste, it was nothing he could put his finger on; it was a feeling, clinging to every particle, as if magic had a weight all its own.   

One morning he found himself in a small valley.  There was a little creek running through it, its water nearly silver in the misty light of dawn.  He walked around it, feeling the invisibility cloak slide through the damp moss at his feet.  The coolness of the air blowing through his overgrown hair was refreshing and he made up his mind to climb the hill and look beyond.   

He had never been in very good physical shape.  Even as a child he had been delicate, and after everything that had happened in the last two years, he was even more so.  Therefore, he moved slowly, carefully, one hand holding the stitch in his side.  When he reached the top of the hill, he stopped to catch his breath.  The mountains around were not as large or impressive as the ones that had surrounded him a few days ago, but he kind of liked that.  He liked the smaller scale of them, and the contrast between the yellowed hills and the powder blue sky above.   

After a moment he sat down on a boulder to better take in the view.  He wondered if this was the kind of place where Harry had hidden.  Wondered if he had also been travelling, moving from place to place, in the wild.  He looked over at the spot beside him and really tried to picture him.  Small and skinny, his hair always a mess, his glasses overlarge, and behind them his eyes bright green.   

“Would you like it here?” Draco whispered.  “Would you think it’s pretty?” 

It was a frivolous concern.  What did it matter what Potter thought of any of this?  He was dead, and yet Draco couldn’t stop his train of thought.  The longer he spent alone, the stronger his conviction was.  He set out on this journey half kidding himself, but now with every day that passed he felt a greater sense of urgency.   

He closed his hand tight around the invisibility cloak, his nails digging the delicate material against his white palm.

- 

He supposed searching for old magic was a little like investigating a crime scene.  He would choose a place to start and then surround it by a magical perimeter.  He would walk around it, fiddling with his wand, touching boulders and cliff walls, trying to feel the pulse of magic beneath them.  He looked for runes as well, for markers, for anything that might indicate the presence of wizards.   

One time, during his third week of searching, he found just such a thing.  There was a small flat stone sitting at the edge of a field.  He instantly sensed something about it, a sort of heat, and magically turned it over.  On the other side there was an inscription.  Although he had taken Ancient Runes for 4 years and had gotten decent grades at it, it all seemed to have gone straight out of his head.  He summoned his translator as he knelt down, trying to interpret the small hand-carved symbols. 

The hand that had made them was sloppy and tilted but he was fairly sure of his translation.  It was a fertility spell, which required a particular phase of the moon, and a mixture of semen and mandrake juice.  Draco set the stone down with disappointment, and then continued scanning the area.   

There were many similar findings, which he documented with mounting frustration both in the letters he sent his parents, and in the documents that Blacks before him had begun.  A week or so after the fertility stone he came to a ruined fortress, with a graveyard to boot.  He could sense magic in the area, and an excitement began mounting within him.  But this was not the place, as the family buried bore an unfamiliar last name: Gaunt.  

He read inscription after inscription, but they were neither the right time period nor the right names.  He searched their castle intensely as well, or what was left of it.  There was a darkness in the place, to be sure, as well as some remnant of magic.  But he found nothing except rusted red blood stains.  He wrote of this extensively to his mother, and she, with her impeccable knowledge of old families and pedigree, informed him that the Gaunts had been direct descendants of Salazar Slytherin.   

At another time such a finding might have stirred something in him.  This was his house after all, and the teachings and beliefs of Salazar Slytherin had been integral to the beliefs his parents had instilled in him from an earlier age.  But he found he did not care now.  Slytherin, and in fact Hogwarts, seemed very far away.   

In another of her letters Narcissa mentioned that a few of his school fellows had come to see him at the Manor. Among them Goyle and Pansy.  They, of course, couldn’t know what he was up to, and his mother was not foolish enough to confide in them.  But she had written that they missed him, and that Pansy, especially, was concerned since she had not seen him since the Battle.   

That had not been on purpose.  He hadn’t meant to disappear from the lives of the people who had once (so long ago) meant so much to him.  It had just happened.  After he got the Dark Mark, all of his priorities had switched.  And Hogwarts had seemed the stuff of children.  If he hadn’t been so horrified by the Dark Lord’s presence at Malfoy Manor, he probably would not have attended his last year.   What was the point anyway? It didn’t mean anything to him anymore.  And neither did people like Goyle or Pansy.  They were not bad, really, they were simply part of his past, like the stuffed animals he had gotten too grown to play with.   

It was startling just how little he had thought of them… and, by contrast, how much he still thought of Harry.   

How would 7th year have been different if Harry had been there? If they had had one last Quidditch match?  If they had shared classes together? If Draco could have looked across the Great Hall and seen him, surrounded by red heads, smiling placidly? 

The truth was Hogwarts had felt empty without him.  And now that he was gone – really, truly, gone – everything felt a little empty.   

It was a difficult thought to come to terms with.  Draco felt like he was poking at a bruise, a sore spot, a great festering wound.  But the fact that it was the truth could not be denied.  The moment Harry Potter had left this world, every goal and wish and aspiration Draco had previous harbored had left too.  What was the meaning of any of it if Harry wasn’t here? If they were not going to compete anymore, to bicker, to fight.  If he was not going to get revenge for the scars Harry had left on his body.   

Late at night, when sleep would not come, he would lay out on the bed, his fingertips running up and down the long scars on his torso.  Where had Harry even gotten that spell from?  The last thing Draco really remembered before passing out on the bathroom floor was the bewildered look in his eyes.  It was total surprise, total horror, but what kind of idiot used a spell like that without knowing what it would do?  Was he really that naïve? That trusting?   

“Never trusted me , did you?” The words fell foolishly into the silence.  “Maybe I was a bit of a dickhead, but I didn’t know who you were, I didn’t know what you were like.” He ran his fingers over the scars Potter had given him.  

And then he fell into it again – a dazzling fantasy that was growing in reach every day – an alternate world where he and Harry had been friends.  Where they rode the train together.  Where Draco got to hear Harry’s ideas, his thoughts, his experiences outside of Hogwarts.  Where he told Harry all about his life, all about his parents, and the long legacies of both of his families, and the weighty responsibilities that he bore as the one heir to both.   

He never thought much about the specifics.  If in this reality they were both Gryffindors or Slytherins, if Crabbe and Goyle were their friends or Weasley and Granger. That stuff didn’t matter to him.  What mattered was spending time with Harry, getting to know him (understand him).  What mattered most of all to Draco was getting the opportunity to start fresh.  Merlin, everything would have been different, absolutely everything.   

It made him ache, longing so much for something so terribly impossible.   

“Harry,” he whispered, tentatively.  He wanted a response, illogical as that was.  “Harry?”  He paused again, but he couldn’t hear anything, not the wind, or the sea, or his would-be friend.  He was alone.   He turned onto his stomach on the bed, burying his head in one of the pillows.  

He didn’t even notice he was crying until he felt the wetness against the soft fabric.   

- 

The weeks passed, but he only felt them when he wrote his letters home.  Now Lucius had begun to ask him to return, saying that he had been away long enough already.  Narcissa never said as much, but there were hints in her letters, too.  She kept asking him if he wanted to come back for a break, or to gather more supplies, once even suggesting she had some books at home that could be of help to him.  But he knew all that meant nothing.  They were getting anxious about him, that was all.   

For his part, being alone suited him. It was a great reprieve from the pressures he had felt the last few years.  There was no one here to criticize him, and no one here he had to shield himself from.  He enjoyed the solitude, and the beauty of the wilds, and, more than anything being able to spend the bulk of his time thinking.    

He had read the entirety of the Black Chronicles several times by now, and although he had yet to taste any success, he had the strangest feeling that it was coming, that he was getting closer and closer to it (to something).  It was difficult to place, or to understand, but Draco was certain that it was his destiny to succeed where his ancestors had failed.   

He wrote so to his mother, and to Lucius.  He wanted them to feel the same certainty that was coursing through his veins.  To understand that there was to be no turning back, and no failure, either.   

The search and the journey were changing him, both in ways he recognized and ways he was blind to.  For instance, he knew that he had begun the habit of earnestly talking to himself (or to Harry).  And he realized that he was spending the majority of his time, particularly if he was outside of the tent, wearing the invisibility cloak.  This was not only to feel closer to Harry, but because the cloak itself was old magic, and it seemed to be connecting him to his quest.   

Other things, he was oblivious to.  Like the fact that he was slowly losing weight.  That his face was gaunt, and the circles around his eyes darker than ever. He had not looked in a mirror since leaving his mother’s house, but if he had, Draco would have been shocked by his own reflection.  There was little of Lucius’s grace and dignity left in his features.  In fact, he was looking more like dear aunt Bellatrix by the day.  There was something new in his grey eyes, something unnatural, something Black.   

Draco was also unaware of the strange little habits he had picked up in all his searches.  Now whenever he was outside, his palm was running along walls, reaching out for something .  He did it unconsciously - it had simply become an automatic response.  He was also using his wand more and more, even for little things, like filling a glass of water or cutting up his dinner.  His mother would have disapproved, to her way of thinking magic was not meant for the inconsequential, but then again, her way of thinking was no longer Draco’s.   

The cold weather began, and with it came rain, and wind, and hale.  In another age the elements would have bothered him, he was, after all, a creature of indoor comforts, but now they came with an odd thrill.  He found a new comfort being out and seeing the rage of nature around him. It was cathartic, and powerful, much like old magic.  He began sensing when storms approached, and instead of shielding himself from them in his tent, he would spend those nights, awake outside, wandering beneath his cloak, letting the wind and the rain beat at him.   

It was here that he really began thinking about what he wanted, what he was trying to achieve.  The vague ideas that had made him leave his parent’s house were at last solidifying, and he saw for the first time his real intent in finding Cepheus’s grave.  He knew now that it had very little to do with the legacy of the Blacks and much more to do with Harry.  With the desperate and strong desire swelling inside of him to speak, to see him again.  To have a new start.  To do things properly this time .   

The day of All Hallows’ Eve he found himself deep in the Highlands.  He was following a sort of wisp in the air, a faint sense that was guiding him forever Northward.  From high cliffs he saw the sunrise over grey waters.  Underneath the cloak he was drenched from the previous night's rain, his hair was matted, his clothes had gone many days without change.  But in that moment, as he saw the golden light over the sea, he knew that all of these were unimportant details – there was something else coming – something stronger.  He was not moving North on a whim, there was something there, something calling to him.   

He walked the entire day, not eating, not resting.  He traced his wand over every surface he could reach, and it seemed with every step his certainty only grew. He knew now that this was no false lead, no fertility rock, no abandoned fortress.  He was moving towards his destiny.   

Before sunset he found something.  An engraving upon a stone.  It seemed to have an aura around it, something potent, that he could almost physically feel as he got close to it.  He knelt by it.  The rock itself was not much larger than a Quaffle, and it was dark and flattened by the sea.   He had to look at it very carefully before finding the inscription, and when he did it bore only one word: beloved.  This single word was carved 7 times in ancient runes.  He traced it with his index finger and it felt like touching a hands through glass, like reaching back and making contact with something lost so long ago.   

He moved more slowly as darkness came.  He was afraid of missing a sign, of overlooking something, but as the moon slowly began to rise, a serenity settled over him. 

It must have been very close to midnight when Draco knew that he had, at last, arrived.   There was a narrow entrance to a cave.  It bore no engraving, no markings or symbols, but old magic could not be so easily concealed.  There was something coming from it – like a faint heartbeat.  

Before entering he removed his invisibility cloak and cast Lumos.   He had expected to find something grand.  A castle carved into the stone, or, at the very least, a high vaulted ceiling like those underneath Malfoy Manor.  What he found instead was a small space, about the size of a closet.  For a moment he thought it was empty, and then he saw the rune for life written on one of the walls.  He approached it, and held his palm against it.  It felt damp to the touch and, although it was neither hot nor cold, it made his skin tingle.   

Having read through many of his father’s books on Dark Arts Draco was certain of what it required.  He pulled a ceremonial dagger from his robes and pricked his palm with it, watching the cut bleed red.  He smeared it over the symbol, pushing his palm against the stone to get the blood rushing faster. He stepped back when he thought there was enough and a moment later the whole wall vanished, revealing a very dark, dingy passage.   

Holding his wand high in the air, Draco proceeded.  The air in the passage  was old and musky, smelling of salt, and sea, and death.  He tried, unsuccessfully, not to gag as he walked into the darkness of the chamber.  Again, he was somewhat disappointed. There was nothing grand about this place, nothing to indicate that it was the grave of one of the greatest wizards to ever live.  It was merely a cave, narrow at the base and wider as you went in.  

At the other end he could see something.  At first he thought it was a sacrificial altar, made of stone, but as he got closer it seemed too small.  He looked at the walls and the floor as he went deeper into the room, searching for symbols or objects, but there were none.  When he was halfway through the room he realized that the object he had spotted was actually a sarcophagus.

It looked like it was crafted from the same rough sea stones that surrounded him.  No marble. No onyx.  It had no jewels and no markings, nothing at all grand or distinct.  As he stood in front of it he held his hand back - afraid to touch.   

For a long time, he stayed still.  He thought of his mother, and dead Aunt Bellatrix, and the grandfather he had never met.  The weight of the long Black legacy they had left for him was paralysing.  It made him forcefully remember what he had felt that night on the North Tower, when he had Dumbledore cornered and wandless.  He had worked so hard to make that happen, and when it had (by miracle, or luck, or skill, he was never sure) he had not known what to do.  Sometimes it was easier to be in search of something, than to have it within your grasp.   

It was only the thought of Harry that made him raise his wand and mutter the incantation. 

He watched as the lid of the sarcophagus rose up into the air above.  And then he had to gather his courage again before looking down into the depth of the sarcophagus.  His wand was poorly angled and all he could see was black.  He lowered it, shining its light on the base.  

There were two corpses there.  They were not, as Draco had expected, skeletons: they still had flesh on them, and clothes, and hair.  It made for a ghastly sight.  The one on the left he identified as a woman, but only by the cut of her dress.  Her hair, long and blonde, came streaming across her shoulders and down past her hip.  Her face was hideous, and somewhat resembling an old tree trunk.  Its colouring was dingy and yellowed, with a section of putrid green.  Her arms were neatly folded over her stomach, skeletal fingers intertwined.  The remarkable thing was that whoever had buried her had chosen to leave her eyes open.  Big blue eyes, shinny and blank, like those of a doll.   That was worst of all, because it made the haggard, half rotten remains look human, a little too human.   

The man besides her was better preserved.  He was an old man, balding and thin.  Like her, his skin was yellowed and wrinkled, with parts discoloured or rotten through, particularly around the jaw, where Draco could see the white of his bone.  His clothes hung loose on whatever shriveled limbs remained.  One of his hands was on the woman’s cheek.  The skin had rotted upon contact, binding them in a most grotesque fashion.  His other hand was pressed to his own chest where two objects lay.  One was a wand, the other a book.   

Around these figures were dried flowers and herbs.  He recognized many of them from potions class and wondered if they were somehow helping preserve their forms. He also searched for an engraving, something that he hoped would have Cepheus’s name, or perhaps even that of his wife.  But there was nothing, no other marking, no sign of who this had been.   

This struck him as odd.  He had always believed that people with great power desired acknowledgement for possessing said power.  It seemed most strange to reach such heights of magic, only to die alone in a cave, without leaving even an epitaph  to indicate who you had once been.   

As hungry as he was for the text in Cepheus’s hands there was also deep apprehension within him.  Draco had certainly done many questionable things in his life, but this felt quite different.  He had hurt people, and subjected others to his will, and the consequences of that had furthered him on his trajectory towards Voldemort.  But this – as he looked down at the two wasted remains of his ancestors, Draco knew that if he disturbed them, he was cursing himself.  If he did this, he was starting a different trajectory, one that was unarguably darker, and one that would certainly bring him into cohabitation with magic that both terrified and enthralled him.   

He shut his eyes.  This was not a decision to be taken lightly.  This was not a moment to be impulsive.  He could hear the storm outside, and in his mind, he imagined the rain and the thunder as they rolled above him.  His clothes were still soaked and heavy – not that he felt them.  And his fingers were numb with cold as he fiddled with his wand.   

He remained over the open sarcophagus for a long time, his mind muddled.  He felt an immense clash within himself.  A clash between the madness of his mother’s family, and the control of his father’s.  Between the path he should have taken long, long ago and the one that he was now considering.  But most of all he felt the clash of all of his desires, all of his dreams for the future.  He wanted this – with whatever consequences would follow – he wanted this dark power, and he wanted Harry, desperately, urgently, maddeningly.  But part of him also wanted something else – some impossible alternative where he could turn back time and start clean, start fresh, do everything over and do it correctly.  And yet another part of him, a pure Slytherin portion, wanted only the future his father had so carefully crafted.  Wanted only to grow strong by Voldemort’s side,  to continue cleansing the wizarding population, to cement a name for himself that all would bow before.   

There had been many points in his life when he had made a decision not understanding its weight.  This included how he had spoken to Harry at Madam Malkins, or joining the Death Eaters at 16.  These were choices that had changed his entirely life, and he had committed to them with little thought.  He did not want to do the same now, he did not want to act like a foolish child and get carried away.   

Slowly he retreated from the remains, his steps echoing in the chamber.  

Although he felt neither tired nor hungry he knew that he should.  He had been neglecting his physical needs for a long time.  He sat cross legged on the cave floor and summoned bread from his bag.  He ate without tasting it, his mouth dry and crumbs rolling down his dirty robes.  He summoned wine next, and then drank it straight from the bottle.  He could only imagine the look of horror on Lucius’s face if he could see him now: wet and filthy, on the floor of a cave, crumbs on lap, and chugging his very expensive  1956 Château Lafite like a hobo who didn’t know any better.   

He intended to finish the bottle, and with it to sink into some peaceful slumber.  Instead, after merely half he promptly fell asleep.  Curled up at the foot of the opened sarcophagus, like a small white cat at the foot of his master’s bed.   

- 

Draco lay awake for a long time without moving. 

He felt that despite the success of the previous night, he had reached a new low as well.  His stomach was aching from lack of regular nourishment.  His head was pounding from the wine.  His back was in agony from spending the night on the floor when he was used to the softest and highest quality feather beds.  To add to it, his clothes were dirty, and smelled of damp and sea and sweat.  

His mouth was dry and ached for water but he remained on the floor, determined not to move until he had quite clearly made up his mind.   

He had dreamt of Harry.  The exact circumstances were blurry and incomplete. Even Harry’s face was distorted.  And yet Draco knew it was him, he had a presence, a heat, a magnetism.  It had always existed between them and now (although Harry was dead) it had somehow continued drawing him in.   

In previous years he would have thought it quite silly for a dream to dictate his future.  He didn’t believe in that kind of thing and, besides, Lucius disapproved of that branch of magic all together.  He had even forbidden him from learning Divination at school, saying that all of that was “a bloody waste of time”.  He was right, as far as Draco could learn.  

Despite this, he did feel that the dream was a sign.  That perhaps wherever he was, Harry was also gravitating towards him.  That maybe – by some force of magic unknown or poorly understood – the Boy Who Lived was standing in this very room with him, more formless than a ghost, more powerless than a spirit, begging him to bring him back to the world of the living.   

Grabbing his wand from the stone floor, Draco stood up. 

He summoned water and drank.  He summoned bread and ate.  He stripped his clothes and cleansed himself with magic, before dressing anew.  Lastly, he pulled his hair back, tucking it neatly behind his ears, in a fashion that reminded him involuntarily of Lucius.   

If he was going to do this very mad Black thing, he was going to do it looking like a Malfoy, and at least faking the control he didn’t truly feel.  He was not going to let himself grow unhinged.  He was not going to be like Bellatrix, all chaos and darkness.   

The only way to do this properly would be to channel the best of his father.   

This time, when he moved towards the sarcophagus, he felt no reverie.  He reminded himself that it was only a cave, only an unmarked grave.  This was no place to intimidate a Malfoy, and whoever the dead man was, he was nothing to him.   

Reaching a bare white hand into the stony depths of the sarcophagus, he brushed the man's half rotten arm to the side and grabbed the book.  He could feel the supple leather between his fingers as he pulled it up and then, backing away, he shut the sarcophagus by magic, without a second glance at the figures within. 

He swept the invisibility cloak proudly over his shoulders and marched out of that cave, his back straight.  He had come here to do something, and it had been done.  Once again, he had been successful, and once again his instincts had been true.  Finding this book had been his destiny.   

Outside the day was clear and cold, but he had no time to admire it. A second later he had apparated away.   

- 

Now that the barrier to Hogwarts had been forever broken, he could apparate directly to the school itself.  He chose an inconspicuous spot, right at the edge of the Forbidden Forest, and for extra discretion he kept the invisibly cloak over himself.   

He appeared right between two old Elm trees, not far from the place where the Grounds Keeper’s cabin had once stood.  He could see the outline of the school perfectly against the grey morning sky.  Towers and windows and walls, all restored.  Of course, Hogwarts was not a school anymore, it was only a castle, and served as Voldemort’s personal residence.  

It was strange that it should look just how he remembered it. Part of him wished that the place had refused to piece itself together after the Battle.  That the magic that had spilled over that terrifying day and night would mark it forever.  But no – it seemed the stone had forgotten – so much more effectively than he himself had.   

Without another glance he began walking into the forest.   

He knew well enough where Harry was, because he had been the one to lay him to rest.   

The events of that day were crystallized in his memory, but at the same time they felt distant from himself.  As if he had been a different person then..  He remembered the Room of Requirement well, and Harry saving him, flying him out of the inferno.  He remembered his own arms around the boy’s waist, and his head pressed hard against his shoulder, too scared to cry, too scared to speak.   

After that he remembered hiding, shuffling about, unsure what he was doing, and what side he was really on.  He had duelled a few people, but only because he had been trying to find his mother. After that he remembered nothing until Voldemort marched back into the castle, with a chained-up Hagrid beside him, Harry’s corpse in his arms.   

Later, he would learn from his mother how the Dark Lord had had to kill him twice.  How the first spell had not worked, and how she herself had held the boy’s head back, pinning his arms with her knees, exposing his neck to the Dark Lord’s spell.   

After that, his sense of time was even further distorted.  He knew that many prominent Death Eaters, among them his father, had taken turns cursing Harry’s body, making it spin in the air, making it convulse with cruciatus, lifting it up and then letting it fall till Draco could hear the bones inside him break.  But that was just the start. 

 He watched them pull the boy apart, limb by limb.   

Greyback ravaged him, tearing clothes and skin, leaving his body raw and bleeding, with huge gashes from shoulder to hip.  And then Uncle Rodulphus had hacked off an arm with a cursed knife.  And not to be outperformed, his brother Rabastan had severed his head.  What followed was a makeshift game of Quidditch, played above the battle ground, with different Death Eater’s throwing Harry’s head at each other and hitting it back with a beater’s bats.   

The Dark Lord quickly grew bored and called this act “silliness,” so they all stopped, and Harry’s head (or what remained of it) fell to the ground.   

The festivities went on into the night.  Draco stayed close to his mother, her arm lovingly around his shoulder, but in his heart, he was with Harry.  When at last the time came when they could slip away, he told her: “Wait for me at the Manor.” 

And she knew better than to ask.   

Piece by piece he gathered Harry’s body.  The act made him retch until his stomach was empty, and he was simply dry heaving.  Harry was not one form, he was raw ripped limbs, and guts mushy pink and red against the grass.  Even his face was nothing, all his features shattered, great chunks of his hair pulled out, nearly all his teeth knocked out, one of his eyes burst.  He would not have known him.  It looked more like a prehistoric stone carved to resemble a human than a real face.   

He buried him with magic, and in haste.  It was possible, no, probable that he missed parts.  He knew he had four limbs, and his torso, but there were bound to be digits missing, and internals too.  The fear of getting caught had stopped him from being thorough.  He had dumped him into the earth with no ceremony, no markings, nothing but an old banner over his body.  He had not even taken the time to piece together the bits he had collected.  He dumped them into the earth and sealed it up, covering it as best he could so that others would not come to disturb him.    

And he had tried – tried very effectively – to never think about the thing he had buried.  Instead he thought of Harry as he had been in school.  A boy with untidy hair, and Slytherin green eyes.  But now at last he would have to contend with the form he had actually buried.  A form incomplete and damaged in every sense of the word.   

His burial place was unremarkable and yet Draco knew it.  He could sense their sudden proximity to each other and when he reached it a slow feeling of calm swept through him.  He smiled serenely to himself, and here at last turned his attention to Cepheus’s book.   

It was of a sturdy build, the binding thick but supple. It had no title, no markings on the spine, but it bore telltale signs of having been much used.  The binding had the indentation of fingernails, and scorch marks, and something dark that looked like ink at one of the corners.  He pressed his palm against it before pulling it open.   

He wanted the process to be quick.  He wanted only to read a spell and have Harry back with him again.  But of course, this was not to be.  He sighed and sat down on the grass, resting against a tree trunk as he pulled out his translator.   

He began his search within the book as clumsily as he had begun his search for the grave.  He flipped through the pages quickly hoping to see the runes for death or resurrection.  He scanned pages in a few seconds and then turned them over.  The book was mostly written in a crisp slanted hand, but sometimes there were illustrations too, of the moon, or a cauldron, or a sacrificial stone.  Each time he got to one he would pause, admiring its vibrancy despite it having lived through 500 years of darkness.  This way of searching, however, proved futile.  He was far too careless, and after only an hour or so he reached the back of the book, having discovered nothing.   

Draco quickly gave up on the idea of this being simple, or easy, and started from the beginning again.  This time he went painstakingly slowly, rune by rune, even going so far as to pass his wand through the yellowed margins of each word in search for some secret inscription.  He made out entire sentences wondering if Cepheus had concealed this most powerful of all spells in the thicket of something entirely different.  By nightfall he had only gone through a dozen or so pages and he was tired.   

He got up and stretched, his eyes inadvertently falling on the lump of soil where Harry was buried.  How lovely it would be, he thought, to lie down on top of it, while the moon shined on them.  It was a mad thought, and he would surely not act on it, but it also didn’t scare him.  At another time being that unhinged, that well – Black – would have been upsetting, he was after all his father’s son, but now it only seemed natural, as if this was the trajectory he was always set on.  

He made up his tent and rested the night inside, eating a good dinner, taking a shower, and changing into fresh pajamas before crawling into his warmed bed.  Although his body ached, and his head was pounding, he found it difficult to sleep.  It was just wasting more time, and he often found his eyes drifting to the heavy book on his night table.   

“Soon. I’ll see you soon, Harry,” he said to the darkness of the chamber, before letting sleep take him. 

Chapter 3

For days he carefully combed through the book.  He translated sentence by sentence, growing more adept with each page and hour that passed.   

It was at the very beginning of his fifth day in the Forbidden Forest that he found it.  The page bore a beautiful illustration at the top of a sunrise over the mountains.  Below in Cepheus’s slanted writing it said: 

 

To love, most long lasting  

To life, lost in lark and lance  

I surrender not  

From this earth, ere I wept,  

Shall leap life.  

 

She shall rise in sunshine  

She shall smile, sincere,  

She shall sleep at my side  

Soft, and soundless,  

My companion returneth  

 

She shall live as I live,  

She shall love as I love  

Let her be lavished in laurels and lilies,  

Let her be free of labors, and lamentations,  

Let her at last exist besides me  

 

Beloved, I give thee my blood  

Beloved, I bind myself to thee  

Let all the world abhor me  

And no god absolve me,  

For you are all I need  

 

This spell blackens my lips,  

As I speak it,  

This spell curses my soul,  

As I speak it,  

And yet speak it I shall  

 

And underneath this passage was a single line.  When Cepheus had set it down his hand had shaken, the letters were also uneven on the page, they slanted downward.  It read: 

Almus Exanimis

For the span of several minutes Draco stayed perfectly still.  He read over his translation again and again, mouthing the words to himself as if they were the enchantment.  When he got down to the small, uneven spell at the bottom he traced the writing with his fingertips.  Had Cepheus been the last to use it? The first to use it? Had he really been so powerful he could create spells for life and death? Was that the ancestry that Draco had coursing through his veins? Was that the greatest legacy of his family? 

He turned his eyes to the next page.  It had further instruction on the working of the spell.  It could, of course, simply be uttered, but there were things to make it more potent.  He read through these instructions, which were made by the same hurried hand.  They brought a knot to his stomach.  He had thought that digging up Harry would be the worst part, but sections of these instructions made that seem like a children’s game.   

He had to let the remains soak in mandrake juice under a full moon. And then he had to sacrifice parts of himself for his beloved.  Blood first.  Bone second.  Semen third.  He had to cut himself, and rip himself, and then, somehow, still find the pleasure to spill his seed. It was grotesque.  Cepheus had also failed to indicate how much blood or bone the spell required.  

Ever since he had remembered Narcissa’s tales, he had wanted this to happen. At first it had been a half-formed thought, but everyday it got clearer, it got stronger.  And since he had begun his travels this goal had filled with urgency.  But now he realized this was not going to be as swift or easy as he had anticipated.  

For one thing there were only six days until the full moon, and in that time, he had to find and harvest a vast amount of mandrake juice.  And that was only the practical problem; there were many moral ones to contend with as well.  

He sighed and closed the book.  Why were things never as easy as he envisioned them? Why was it never just about him and what he could do? It was frustrating how he always had to rely on others, how he always had to play the political game.   He hadn’t been able to go in search of Cepheus’ grave without lies and manipulation, and now he had to use those same methods again to attain what he so desperately wanted.   

At other times, Mandrake juice might not be so hard to find.  There were the Hogwarts’s green houses for one.  And then there was also the fact that he had a vault full of gold at his disposal - an vast fortune hoarded by generations.  He could have gone to Diagon Alley or Knockturn Alley and found exactly what he needed.   

But these days everything was more treacherous.  The world was full of spies.  If he so much as stepped foot in a public setting, Voldemort would know about it.  He sighed, and ran his fingers through his hair, combing it back.  It was getting ridiculously long, like his father’s (like his mother’s), and felt silky between his fingers.  He pushed and pulled at it nervously, trying to think of a course of action.   

Eventually, of course, he would have to go to Voldemort.  Either to present him with the book, or to be punished for his failure.  He had known that from the onset; however, he had never really visualized it.  And now that he had the book in front of him, it seemed a horrible thing to turn it over to the Dark Lord.  Although he had not translated every spell, he was sure there were things in here that would be to his liking.  But how else was he to get mandrake juice?   

Wherever he went Voldemort would know.  He would hear of it and how would Draco justify himself? How would he explain the fact that he intended to resurrect Harry Potter? They would think he was a traitor.  They would not understand that this action had nothing to do with good or evil, right or wrong, that this was not in the least a political act, that it was just his heart he was following, his desire, his devotion.  He missed Harry.  Missed his presence.  Missed the way those green eyes were always looking at him.  And he did not want to live without him anymore than he had already had to.     

What had his mother said, all those years ago when she read him stories? How can you expect mudbloods, and half-bloods, to understand how we love?  To understand that when we love nothing could stand between us, not even death? They do not feel things like we do. He found that the words came back easily to him.  As if he had been secretly reciting them every day of his life.  And with them came his mother's voice, soft and even, and full of tenderness.   

His posture straightened. He was not going to be able to manage this alone.  He needed an ally, and there was really only one he would consider.   

- 

Unver the protective shield of the invisibility cloak Draco apparated back to Malfoy Manor.  As he did so he felt a knot of guilt at having left Harry on his own again, alone and in the dark.  He knew now that they were meant to be together, in a way that he had never understood before, and leaving him was almost physically painful.   

The house was quiet, its exterior sad and imposing.  The whole place had dried up since Voldemort had been stationed here, the lushness and beauty that his father had taken such pride in swallowed up into dry, cracked earth.  Maybe when this was over, Draco thought, as he quietly slipped through a narrow opening in the gate, they should find a new place of residency.  Start over somewhere untainted.  Or maybe, like Cepheus, it was time for Draco to leave his old life and start off a life with only Harry to cling to.   

He entered the house through the back exit, the one usually used only by the house elves.  It was early morning by this point, the sky barely tinted by the first signs of sunshine.  Inside the old Manor the air was stuffy and had the faint hint of Lucius’s imported colognes.  He moved through familiar corridors slowly.  Around him the portraits of ancestors past continued sleeping and he cherished that rare silence.   

After a small search of the home he found Narcissa in one of her usual places.  She was kneeling on a windowsill, staring down at the garden, in her silk robe, long, blonde hair streaking down her back.  In this position, and from the softness of the light, she looked very young. It was easy for him to imagine what she would have been like as a young girl, furtive and solemn.   

“Mum,” he whispered.  

 She turned her head.  There was no surprise in her silver eyes; whatever she felt, she hid.  “Draco?” 

He stepped forward, moving to sit by her and taking her hand, so that she could feel the warmth of him. “I need you,” he said simply.   

“Anything,” was her reply.   

“I need mandrake juice urgently, could you get some for me?” 

Her hand wrapped possessively around his wrist. “Are you alright?” 

“Yes.”  He wanted to tell her that things were going very well, that he had succeeded, but he found that having the book meant very little to him if he did not have the power to get Harry back. 

“I’m in the Forbidden Forest, and you must come before the full moon.” 

“And then?” The words were spoken in the softest of whispers and he was brought back to all those nights he had spent as a child in her arms, falling asleep to that same tone of voice.  “Will you come home to us then?” 

In tone this was a question, but in reality, she said it to extract a promise from him.  An exchange.  She would get him the mandrakes, and he would return home to her.  That was the way purebloods did things. To attain something, you had to give something up.  “I’ll come home,” he promised.   

She kissed his knuckles under the thin veil of the cloak, and a moment later he had slid out of her reach again in order to return to Harry.   

- 

Somehow, going back to the clearing in the Forbidden Forest where Harry lay felt more like coming home than returning to the Manor had.  He crouched by the grave as the bits of brightness filtered in through the high canopy of leaves above them.  It was a golden hour of sorts, with the sounds of the forest filling the air around them. 

“Just six more days,” he whispered to Harry, his hand resting lovingly over the earth that covered him.   

Everything would be different after that.  

When Harry had been alive, outdoing and outshining him had been his life’s purpose.  Now it all would be reversed, and he would do everything in his power to bring Harry happiness. To give him rest. To give him peace.  To keep him safe.  He would shield him from everything that was going on in the world. Draco would gladly dedicate his life to him.  

“You saved me, it’s only fair I save you.  We always did everything in equal measures.” A hint of a smile came onto his face. “I step on you, you cut me open, you save me from the flames, I bring you back to life.” 

- 

For six days Draco felt the anticipation mounting.  He tried to remember his resolution at Cepheus’s grave and continued grooming and dressing with his father in mind, not letting his grip on reality weaken.  His days, however, were spent with Harry.  Sometimes he talked to him, sometimes they sat in silence together.  Being close to him now felt like a necessity.   

He also began getting things prepared for the full moon.  He cut down an Ash tree, and hollowed out the trunk, creating something akin to a bathtub.  He would lay down Harry’s remains here, along with the mandrake juice and the other listed ingredients.  He had also determined which part of his bones he would give Harry.  He settled on three fingers on his left hand, hoping that was enough.  He had thought several times of going back to the tomb and examining Cepheus to see what he had given up for his beloved, but he did not like the idea of leaving Harry, and more than that, he had a feeling that Harry did not want him to leave either.   

On the afternoon of the full moon he waited around the edge of the Forest, expecting to see the narrow shape of Narcissa in a black cloak.  He was not disappointed.  

Just as dusk was coming, she apparated, moving quietly between the trees.  Under the cloak, he went to her.  “Did you bring what I asked for?”   

Her eyes moved to the precise spot where he stood, invisible.  “Yes.” Gently he grabbed her by the forearm.  

They walked into the forest and Draco could feel his heart pounding.  Tonight.  He would have Harry tonight. Everything was ready for it.  His thoughts were so fixated on him that he didn’t even consider how much of this Narcissa guessed at.  She had come here as he had expected, without questions and without judgment. She was solidarity itself, and she loved him.  But of course, there were things Narcissa would not stand for.

When they reached the clearing, he took off the cloak at last.  He was well dressed, his hair combed, his teeth minty fresh. As she looked him over, he could see the gleam of pride in her eyes.  He took in her appearance as well and spotted a cloth bag tucked against the lining of her cloak.  She pulled it out and handed it to him.   

He was pleased by how heavy it was.  As he opened it, he saw cylindrical shapes all wrapped up in white linen.  He unravelled the fabric to see a crystal jar full of a murky brown liquid.  The bag had more than a dozen of them.  He took it and turned around, moving towards the old truck he had carved out. He could feel Narcissa watching him from the other side of the clearing, but it failed to make him self-conscious.  In that moment it felt like he had nothing to hide from her.   

Carefully, one by one, he unravelled the fabric to reveal jars, and unscrewed the lids.  As the light in the Forest dimmed, he spilled their contents into the tub.  The scent was familiar.  It brought back days in Herbology class, looking at Potter’s reflection in the glass of the green house.  

Once he had finished, the substance was a few inches deep, reflecting the dusky purple sky above them.   He got out every last drop he could from the jars, using magic to lift up the last droplets and then drop them in.   

He straightened up when he finished and looked over his shoulder.  Narcissa was just where he had left her, still in that black cloak that was blending more and more into the background with every passing moment.  “You should leave,” he told her.   

“If you think so.” 

“I do.” 

She observed him with her grey eyes, chin slightly raised.  She had the ability of making him feel small, childish, like he could still run into her arms and weep on her sleeve.  “May I come back tomorrow?”  

He considered for a moment and then nodded. “Come at dawn.” Tomorrow would be significantly easier if she were here to guide him through it.  He gave no more details, and said nothing else as Narcissa turned and slipped out of the clearing, quiet as a shadow.  

Draco knelt by the tub.  He had wanted to be calm and collected in this moment, but all he felt was panic and anxiety.  He kept thinking about everything that could go wrong, and what the consequences of that might look like.  For all these weeks he had had such faith in the spell itself, that he wasn’t sure what he would do if it didn’t work out as he expected it to.  

He waited in silence, evening out his breathing, and trying to stop his hands from shaking.  He needed the moon to be up before he could proceed.  He felt time move with agonizing slowness as the sky above him darkened.  When at last he could spot specks of stars above him he got up and walked to the precise spot where he had laid Harry to rest so many months before.   

He raised his wand high, and wordlessly moved off layers and layers of dirt, flinging them off to the other side of the clearing and causing a cloud of dust to rise.  He coughed as the earth settled, and then inched closer to the hole in the ground.  

His final act of kindness to the boy who lived had been to lay a Gryffindor tapestry over his body.  He still remembered summoning it from the castle and watching it flying towards him, flapping ridiculously in the wind like a battered flag.  Now only the gold thread was still visible, everything else turned to dirty brown.  He raised his wand and levitated it up, tossing it to the side with the discarded dirt.  

The smell of death and rot hit him even before he saw the mangled remains.  It was heavy and vile, and every instinct in his body was telling him to step away, to disengage.  He gagged at the smell, and then, thinking quickly, formed a magical air bubble around his nose and mouth like he would if he were swimming.  

It was only then that he began moving the body.   He tried not to look as each arm zoomed out of the grave and into the tub of mandrake juice, making splashing noises as they dropped.  His left leg came next, in two parts, pieces of denim still on it.  His right had fared better, it was the only limb still attached to the torso, but even so it was a mangled, disgusting thing, bits of bone showing among the rotting flesh.  

Harry’s torso, however, was almost the worst and despite the protection of the air bubble, he gagged again just by its sight.  He had been ripped open just under the belly, like a pig for slaughter, half the organs missing from within. Draco turned away as he raised the severed head out of the grave.  He did not need to see that, he couldn’t see that.  But he heard it drop among the other pieces into the tub.  Lastly, he moved the rotting bits of blackened meat that had once been innards.   

He walked the circumference of the grave, trying to summon anything that might have been left behind.  A shrunk brown thing zoomed up that he thought might have once been an ear.  When he heard the tiny sound it made against the revolting mixture in the tub his stomach flipped.  That was all of Harry.  Every bit that he had been able to salvage.  That was everything that still existed of him, but would it be enough?   

He covered up the grave again, erasing with it any evidence that might have pointed to what it had once hidden.  This done, he undid his bubble-head charm and looked up at the sky.  Although he had expected the moon, something about it startled him.  It looked so pure and beautiful against the darkness.  And it reminded him of his mother, and his father (and himself).   Reluctantly he shook that thought away.  He shouldn’t be thinking of his family tonight.   

Instead he began rearranging Harry’s remains so that they were at least roughly in the right place.  The mandrake juice had turned a deeper shade of brown, and he tried not to notice what the fluids were doing to the corpse itself.  It looked like all the flesh was turning to muck.  

With one last look at the moon above, Draco began to undress.  He took off every item of clothes carefully, delicately, folding it with magic and laying it in a neat pile at the foot of the tub.  It was already November and the chill of the night stung his body, making goosebumps form all over his flesh.  There was a vulnerability to being naked in the dark, and he relished in it.  At last it felt like he was making amends.  He was going to give Harry everything he had to give: his blood and his bones, his dignity and his pride.  Everything part of his body and everything in his life.  All of it.   

He summoned the knife.  It was a family heirloom, of course, more than two centuries old and probably never used.  The Malfoys were not big on bloodshed, his father liked to call this a “ceremonial” knife.  The sheath was encrusted with rubies, but the knife itself was intricately carved ivory, white and pale as his fingertips.  He gripped it in his right hand and just for a moment closed his eyes.   

The cold was numbing him.  Involuntarily, he was shivering and jittering, his extremities heavy and slow.  This was the last moment that he could change his mind, and he let it pass over him, without a single wisp of a doubt.  When he opened his eyes, he extended his left hand over the grave, palm up.  He wished it would hold steady, but it was shaking badly, from both cold and fear.  He gripped the knife forcefully in his right hand, took a deep breath and then, in one fell swoop, slashed at the flesh from elbow to wrist, right over his Dark Mark.     

For a moment there was no pain, and he calmly watched the blood spill down, black in the darkness of the night.  But it only lasted a moment and the next he had fallen to his knees, his right hand automatically clutching at the wound, white panic flashing through his mind.  The slipperiness of the blood over his fingers, and the haziness that took over his thoughts made him drop the knife into the tub, mingling it with Harry’s rotting flesh, and the deep brown liquid that had once been pure mandrake juice.   

His right hand shaking, he plunged it into the tub.  Trying not to take account of the things that he felt as he grabbed the knife handle and secured it in his grip once more.  He had gone over this act in his head a million times.  He had always accounted for the pain; but he had never accounted for the panic.  It felt like he couldn’t think straight.  Like the bridge between his intentions and his motor functions had been severed completely.  He found it hard to grip the knife properly, to get all his fingers in the right position.  And his vision was getting blurry, distorted.   

He blinked often as he practiced his breathing, desperately trying not to pass out despite his weak genes.  

For a few minutes he waited like that, one hand gripping the knife, the other tilted down, blood dripping down his fingers and into the tub.  When he felt a little bit of strength returning, he gripped the knife hard again.  He extended the fingers of his left hand, which was entirely covered in blood.  He took another bracing breath, raised the knife into the air, and then swept it down to his fingers.   

The plan had been to cut three, right at the base.  However, he brought the knife down at an awkward angle so that his middle finger was cut off right below the knuckle, so all three of them became bloody stumps.  The digits dropped into the remains and he stared at his hand, now so unfamiliar.  He waited for the pain to hit, for the deep ache of the missing fingers, but he felt nothing at all.  The knife slid from his right hand onto the grass by his bare knees, and he closed his eyes.   

He slumped over. It felt like he was going to be sick.  Like he was fading away.  He could feel his visioning tunneling in, but he had to push past that.  He had to do this alone, and he had to do this to the best of his abilities.  Harry was counting on him.  Feeling strangely out of equilibrium, he rested his head against the side of the tub.  It was smeared with his own blood, and he was sure it was leaving a mark on his forehead as he gathered up his strength for the next challenge.  

He stayed like this for a long time.  Longer than he felt he should have.  He kept counting to a hundred and then telling himself he had to start, but somehow, he could not find the strength.  Many times, he wondered if Narcissa was still here, if she was still watching him, and if she was, why she hadn’t come to his aid yet.  Maybe she trusted in his strength.   Or maybe she knew that this was not for her to interfere with.  

Draco raised himself up onto his knees and while his left hand bled, his right grabbed hold of his soft cock.  It was shrunken from the cold, and puny against his numb hand.  He pumped it slowly, closing his eyes.  He felt no desire.  He felt nothing but shock and weakness.  But if he could give Harry his blood, and give Harry his bones, surely then he could give him this as well.  

It took minutes of pumping to even get him hard.  He tightened his grip, running his thumb over his head, keeping his eyes closed.  He let images run through his head freely in his blood-lost daze.  Harry nude to the waist during the second Triwizard task.  Harry wearing that Weasley sweater that brought out the green of his eyes.  Harry with his hands splattered with ink stains, nervously fidgeting beneath the table.  Harry swerving in the air during a Quidditch match,  sweating and concentrating and glorious in the light. 

There were so many things he cherished in his memories of Harry.  But there would also be so many to cherish in the future.  Harry with his head on Draco’s shoulder.  Harry lying beside him in bed.  Harry smiling as he dried off his body with Draco’s Slytherin green towel after a shower.  Harry’s mouth hot against him. Harry’s hands digging at his shoulder.  Harry’s legs wrapping around his waist.   

He came with a lurch, raising himself up enough so that his cum spilled easily from his cock and his hand into the concoction below.  He hung his head.  But just like he felt no pain, he felt no pleasure.  And part of him felt that he would never feel either again.  He had not cast the spell yet, had not uttered the words, but already there was magic here, and the curse of this magic was already upon him.   

Picking up the wand from the grass besides him he raised it slowly, just like the knife.  He winced at the similarities of the gestures, his gaze falling upon his bloody, stumpy fingers.  Despite the cold he felt like his body was slick with sweat, and sullied from blood and cum.  Every bit of him felt dirty and tainted under the pristine light of the moon.   

This was magic from another realm.  This was magic that should not exist.  He understood that now, in a way he had never before.  This act would alienate him from everything in the world, everything except Harry.  And still there was nothing but certainty within him.    

Shaking, he got his feet.  He stood over the tub, his wand securely in his hand.  A breeze of cold air went through him, fluttering the ends of his hair, and he took a deep breath.  He needed all of his strength for this, and all of his love.  He needed all of his devotion, and all of his power.  This was the single most important spell he would ever cast in his life.   

He raised his wands and said in the commanding tone of an aristocrat said: “Almus Exanimis . ” 

Copious amounts of white light spilled out from his wand, and unlike most spells it was not a flash, it persisted, illuminating the world around him.  He could suddenly see the details of the things that lay inside the tub, and of the trees on every side of the clearing.  He could also see the canvas of the tent behind him, and the glint of the knife in the grass.  The light was touching everything, wrapping itself around things like smoke, but it was also concentrating, growing deeper in itself.   

The light within the tub was blinding now. He could see nothing of its interior and he had to bring his arm to his face to shield himself from its harshness. Yet despite the fact that his eyes were shut tight and that his arm was shielding his face, he could still see the light.  In fact, he could almost feel it.  The light was colder than the air.  It felt like a current, waving through them, chilling and severe.

After a few moments he braced himself and opened his eyes again. The light had shrunken back, leaving the trees and the clearing and the tent, and all of it spilling into the tub.  He could see nothing inside but white, a white so pure and clean that it looked like it was part of a dream.  He blinked and a second later it had vanished.   

He was standing, naked and blind.  He blinked rapidly, looking down at the tub, his heart thumping away madly in his chest.  He felt like he wasn’t breathing at all.   His eyes were still adjusting to the renewed darkness and he could see nothing inside the tub.  Finally coming to his senses, he raised his wand again and cast lumos. 

The remains in the tub were no more.  The mangled clothes. The rotting fresh.  The protruding bones.  The wilted, unidentifiable organs.  The dried blood.  The crushed face.  It was all gone.  Instead there was a familiar boy, a familiar face.   

Draco dropped to his knees as he gaped at it, not allowing himself to really believe it.  Harry had all his limbs, and all his features.  Like Draco, he was fully naked, with new scars where his limbs had been detached and his tummy ripped open.  But he was whole and unmistakably human.   

“Harry,” he croaked.   

The boy shifted, moving ever so slightly towards the sound of his voice.  

“Harry,” he repeated.  

Slowly Harry’s eyes fluttered open.  One socket was empty, the other had the familiar green eyes that he had so often admired from a distance.  “Harry?”  

“Draco?” he whispered. 

At the sound of his voice Draco felt actual tears forming.  He bowed his head.  It felt like he should pray.  Like he should dance.  Like he should crawl inside that tub and wrap his arms around him, like he always wanted to.  The tears were streaming down his face as free and as messy as the blood had done earlier.   

He reached his hand inside the tub and touched the back of Harry’s hand with his dirty fingers just to reassure himself.  It felt like skin.  Like normal human skin.  Harry made no move to shift away from him, he stayed where he was, watching him with that one green eye.   

“It’s okay,” said Draco, raising his head to look at him.  He didn’t even realize he was smiling.  “It’s all alright.  We’re back together again, like we should have always been.” He pulled Harry’s hand up till it was in front of his face and then kissed each of the knuckles.  “I’m gonna take care of you.  I am not going to let anything happen to you.  We’re gonna be safe, we’re gonna be safe.” 

He kissed Harry’s hand again, clutching at it. “It’s all going to be alright; things will finally be how they were supposed to be.” Tears continued to stream down, and he couldn’t stop them.  “Are you okay?” 

“Draco?” 

“Yeah, it’s me-“ he made a sound that was half a sob, half a laugh.  “Your rival at school, remember?” 

Harry nodded his head.  

“But it’s going to be different now.  Everything is going to be different.  Do you believe me?” 

Harry made no movement.   

“I failed you. I know I did.  I failed you over and over again. I went against myself, okay?  But that’s not gonna happen anymore.  I’m not gonna let it.” A sob broke through and his entire chest heaved.  “Do you believe me? Please believe me?” 

He stared expectantly at him and for a moment thought that he would get no reply but then Harry opened a toothless mouth and said: “Draco.” 

Draco smiled at him and gently interlaced their fingers.  The touch was everything.  It grounded him, and it seemed to clear his head.  “Come on we have to get up, we have to get you warm.” He rose on legs that felt as weak as pudding.  “Can you get up, Harry?” 

With the disjointed awkwardness of a toddler, Harry moved his limbs and rose, with help from Draco’s good hand.  Carefully Draco guided him to step outside the tub, till they were standing right next to each other, naked under the moonlight.   

“You’re hurt,” said Harry, his singular eye on Draco’s maimed left hand.   

 “Are you? Do you hurt?” 

Harry’s free hand touched the deep red scar right above the pelvic bone.  “I don’t know,” he answered.   

“I don’t know if I hurt either, to be honest,” said Draco.  With the only two fingers remaining in his left hand he picked up his discarded wand from the grass.  He murmured a healing spell to close off the wound in his arm, and then another on his bloody, stumpy fingers.  “I guess that will do for tonight,” he said as he took a tentative step towards the tent.   

It felt like he had been awake a million years, or like he had never learned how to sleep.  He moved towards the tent slowly, his trajectory crooked, as if he were intoxicated.  Harry held on to his hand and walked a step behind him, timidly, like a child.   

The tent was warm and stuffy and smelled of his expensive cologne.  He had no idea what to do now. Did he need to eat? Did Harry? Should he disinfect his wound? Should he check that Harry was really alright? There was a whole list of things he should probably do, but he had no energy for any of them.  His body felt sluggish, and his head, hazy.  The only thing that was keeping him from falling to the ground right then and there was the warmth of Harry’s hand.   

He guided him towards the bed.  He pulled back the covers, and then went into the spot closest to the canvas wall.  For a moment Harry just stared at him and then he crawled in by his side.  Draco pulled up the blankets over both of them, and underneath searched again for the comfort of Harry’s hand.   

“I really missed you,” he said as he squeezed it.  “I really didn’t know how to make a life without you.” 

Draco’s eyes fell closed, and he shuffled a little closer to Harry, laying his head down in the space between their two pillows.  

He wanted to stay awake, to watch him and make sure that he was alright, but he couldn’t do it.  He couldn’t keep his eyes open.  He couldn’t keep his head clear.  All that he knew was that Harry was besides him, and everything was right in the world again. 

Chapter 4

It was the pain that woke him up. An alarming ache shot through his left arm and forced him to sit up just before dawn.  For an instant he stared at his maimed hand with cold horror, and then everything came back to him.  He spun his head around to the spot where Harry had been the previous night.  He found him there, just the same, eyes closed, chest rising.  A real breathing person, with messy black hair sticking out every way against the white pillow. 

Draco lay back down on the bed, staring carefully at Harry’s features.  He had been afraid of him rising again like an inferi, dead skin and a distorted face, but he looked exactly like he had before.  The same nose, the same mouth, the same eyebrows, and through his fringe Draco could even see the lighting scar that had been the cause of so much.  It almost felt like one of his fantasies.  The real Harry Potter was lying in his bed.  

He remembered nights at Hogwarts, deep in his denial and his loneliness, where he had allowed himself to indulge in such thoughts in the long hours of the night.  Where he had put a pillow in his arms and closed his eyes, pretending it was the other boy.  And now here was the real thing, just within reach. 

As frightening and exhausting as the previous night had been however, these upcoming hours would perhaps be the most difficult of his quest. He may have found the spell book and resurrected his beloved but everything was far from over, far from settled.  In the tale of Cepheus he had abandoned the world for his wife, going from hidden place to hidden place, living among shadows, shielding himself from the hate and violence all those who did not understand him. And now that the magic was cast, that surely was Draco’s fate as well.  

He had to disappear from the life he had had and settle things so that no one would look for him.  His mother and father would be heart-broken of course, but Narcissa would have to accept whatever he chose for himself.  He was not a child anymore, and if his success proved anything it was that he was the master of his own destiny.  He was convinced he would be able to handle them, it was only the Dark Lord who really stood in his way.  

He moved his hands across the sheet, knowing he had left his wand somewhere, and a shot of pain went up his left side.  He winced and continued the search only with his right.  He found it pressed against Harry’s hip and pulled it up slowly, trying not to wake him.  The first thing he did was clean all the blood from his hands.  This allowed him really to look at the damage he had done.  The cut on his forearm would heal well, it was not deep.  His fingers, on the other hand, were well beyond his ability to repair.  They looked hideous, and although he had sealed the wound yesterday, there was a hot, throbbing pain coming from it that he feared would turn into an infection if he didn’t treat it properly. 

While Harry continued sleeping Draco got up.  He showered and dressed as quietly as he could, anticipating Narcissa’s return any moment.  He didn’t want her to come in when he was a mess in bed.  He wanted her to see that he had the situation under hand. 

It had been a long time since he had eaten (at least a full day, but he wasn’t sure) but nothing seemed appetizing to him, so instead he made himself some coffee. He drank it from the dinner table, looking carefully through the open bedroom door.  From this position he could see Harry, sleeping just like he had left him.  Tomorrow they would sleep in, he promised himself, as he brought the coffee to his lips.  They would spend the whole morning in bed. They would talk, like he had always wanted them to, and Draco would bring him food and coffee, and anything else he fancied.  What did Harry like to eat?

He wasn’t given long to consider this.  There was a noise outside, he grabbed his wand off the table and stood up.  It had to be Narcissa of course, she was the only person who knew where he was or who was permitted within the boundaries of his defensive magic.  But still there was the prickle of fear.  The Dark Lord could do many things.  He stepped towards the opening of the tent and then saw a shadow pass along the canvas wall, long and slender.

“Draco?” his mother whispered. 

“Come in.”

She slinked in through a narrow gap in the opening.  She was dressed in a black velvet robe, her blonde hair loose over her shoulders.  But her face, usually so passive and doll-like was strained, a line at her forehead, her eyes sharp.  As soon as she entered, she looked him over, from head to foot, as if to assure herself that he was whole.  When she saw his left hand, she winced for him, and her eyes went over each of his stumpy fingers as if she were carefully taking note of their state and color. 

“How did it go?”

“As well as the story.”

Her eyes lingered on his face for an instant, and then surveyed the rest of the room.  “Where is he, then?”

“Asleep.”

“And he’s-”

Draco stopped her. “Alive and healed, as he should be.”  He decided it would look better if he took a seat at the table.  He didn’t want to look like an anxious child, gravitating towards her.  He had outgrown that long ago. 

“And what next Draco? If I may ask.”

She already knew he would need her.  Otherwise she wouldn’t have asked. “I must face the Dark Lord.”

Narcissa sat across from him and lowered the hood of her cloak.  He admired the way the light hit her white blonde hair, and something about it reminded of how the moon had looked the night before.  “What are you going to tell him?”

“That I found the book, and that it is his.  He allowed me to go in search of it, and now that it has been found it, of course, belongs to him.”

Her eyebrow raised.  “Wouldn’t it –” She cocked her head to the side. “Do you want me to speak to him?”

She had grown accustomed to Lucius’s cowardice. He would have sent her, that was certain.  But Draco wasn’t his father.“I think that would raise suspicion.  I think that I ought to give it to him myself.”

“But how do you think he will react when he reads your thoughts?”

“He won’t be able to.”

A little smile came to the corners of her mouth.  “You think you can conceal it from him? Your mind is wide open, my love.”

Something about the pet name stung.  “That is because I do not want to hide from you. Believe me, I’m a better liar than you think.”

“Let us hope so --it is a lot you are riskin.”

“Hope is not the only thing I will need from you.”  He paused but she asked nothing.  “I want you to stay here with Harry, to keep him safe.” She made a curt nod.  “And-” he made his voice into a more forceful tone. “I want you to erase my memories of what happened last night.”

Her eyes flashed with comprehension.  “So, he will not see even if he breaks through to you, very clever.”

It was but it did carry a nasty risk.  Without that memory he would not know that Harry existed at all.  Narcissa could easily get rid of the boy and then their lives would return to some normality.  “Would you do that for me?”

“For you? Anything.”

“And will you promise to make me remember again, after?” He stared into her eyes.  The same shape, the same color.  They were the same kind of person, really.  The same struggles within them.  He was more like her than he had ever been like Lucius. Only he hadn’t realized it before.  

“And what would I get in return for this service?”

“What do you want?”

“The tale tells us that Cepheus ran off with his wife.  That they lived in the wild, hunted and alone. That is not the fate I want for my only child.”

“I can’t possibly stay here, mother. Not with-” involuntarily, his eyes went over to the bedroom, where Harry slept on.  “It wouldn’t be safe for him.”

“I think it would be very safe,” she reached across the table and took his hand in her own.  “You could both stay at Malfoy Manor.  It is private, protected, and nobody would have any need to bother us.  The Ministry is nothing anymore, and we are in the Dark Lord's favor.  There isn’t a safer place for you.  If you run off and disappear, he will think something is amiss, he will hunt for you, hunt for answers.  Is that what you want?”

He had seen Narcissa manipulate his father too many times not to recognize her using those same tactics on him.  However, even with that knowledge clear in his mind, she did have a point. If he disappeared, Voldemort would hunt for him.  He would send people after him.  And Draco and Harry’s entire future would be on the run, hiding.  He was convinced they would last a long time (maybe forever), but their life would surely be chaotic and hard.  

By contrast, what Narcissa offered was idyllic. To live in Malfoy Manor with Harry.  To show him all the places he had played as a child.  To walk him through the building, hearing the nosy, snobbish comments of his ancestors.  To play Quidditch with him in the gardens. To tuck him into his old bed, the serpent incrusted S of Slytherin above both of them.    

“Father can’t know,” he said finally.

Narcissa smiled.  “Not a problem.  You wouldn’t believe the things your father doesn’t know, even when they happen right under his nose.”

He tried not to think of the implications of this and returned to the matter at hand.  “So, you’ll do it, then?”

She nodded. 

“Promise?”

“We can make an unbreakable vow, if you doubt me.”

For a moment he considered it but then shook his head.  It would just be a waste of time and magic.  He did trust her. She was the only person he really trusted.  He stood up.  “Wait here,” he told her as he went over to the bedroom. 

Harry lay on his bed, asleep.  He could see his chest rising and falling with each breath.  Draco knelt down in front of the bed, and gently touched his shoulder. “Harry,” he whispered. 

The green eye opened. 

“How are you feeling?”  He used the fingers on his good hand to tuck his hair behind his ear. 

Harry did not reply, but he moved his head a millimetre closer to him.  Draco leaned forward and kissed his forehead.  “I need to go away for a little while.”

“Away?”

“Only for a bit.”

Harry’s hand moved to grab hold of his sleeve.  “Stay.”

“I can’t, but it won’t be long, I promise.” He kissed his forehead again.  “Are you gonna be okay?”

There was no answer and the hand holding his sleeve did not let go.  Draco wrapped his own hand around it as he stared at that one green eye that would not look away from him.  “I’ll be back soon, and you’re not gonna be alone, okay.  I brought my mum here to take care of you.”

The green eye moved to the opening of the room and Draco suddenly realized that Harry didn’t have his glasses.  Was the world all blotches of color right now? 

Gently, he helped the other boy out of bed.  He brought him clothes, and clumsily, with stiff fingers, Harry dressed himself. Draco grabbed his hand as he pulled him into the main room.  “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered in his ear, hoping his mother didn’t pick up the words.  

Narcissa stood when she saw them and Harry shivered violently next to him.  Her’s might have been the last face Harry had seen while living and it didn’t surprise Draco that he didn’t care to be in her company.  “It’s just for a moment,” he assured him gently. 

“Keep him under the cloak if you have to move,” he instructed Narcissa as he handed it over to her. 

She nodded, and then her white hand stretched out.  “Hi, Harry,” She made her voice gentle, as if she were talking to a small dog who might run away at any rebuff.  His eye watched her warily. 

“It’s okay, she’s not gonna hurt you,” Draco whispered.

Reluctantly, Harry stepped forward, taking her hand and letting go of Draco’s. 

Over Harry’s head he and Narcissa locked eyes, and he felt, suddenly, that something connected them that was stronger than blood or magic.  These were the only two people he had ever really loved.  He loved his mother’s tenacity, her eloquence, the easy way she had of getting away with everything.   He had admired her all his life. 

His love for Harry was something else, something old, and yet just born.  It had a purity to it.  He did not want Harry for money, or fame, or sex.  He did not need validation from him.  His love was simple, clear and clean, like a mountain stream.  And he saw now that it was the best part of him.  Harry brought out all the goodness in him.

“Take care of him,” he said as he grabbed her black cloak and put it over his own shoulders.

“I shall,” she said, offering him a last, weak smile before raising her wand.  

-

In the cool haze of the morning Draco walked out of the Forest, the book clasped in his good hand and his eyes reflective like mirrors. He could feel the dew of the morning soaking the bottom of his robes, and a cold sun, obscured by grey above him.  After searching for so long it felt strange entering the wizarding world again. 

Even staring at Hogwarts, with its familiar towers and high arched windows felt wrong somehow. As if this was not where he was meant to be.  He walked up the path until he reached the main entrance, the figures there gaining focus.  There were two trolls by the main door, their shadows looming down on the grass below.  In the middle there was a Death Eater, face hidden behind a familiar mask, but as he drew closer Draco recognized the height, and posture, and even the way he held his wand. 

“Nott?” He said tentatively when he reached him.

“Malfoy?” said the boy, in a voice that was distant and firm.

Of course, it only made sense now that his fellow Slytherins would be joining the Dark Lord.  By their very nature they wanted to get ahead of the game, and Voldemort was the best way to do so now.  Yet, it still seemed strange to him.  He could so clearly remember Nott as an eleven-year-old, skinny and awkward, his face always hidden behind his vast collection of comics. 

“I’ve been away for a time, with the Dark Lord’s permission, and now I have returned with something to offer him.”

“He hasn’t seen anyone in days-” said Nott quietly.  “But I can send the message.”  For a moment, dark, watery eyes met his and Draco thought he saw something pleading in them, but a second later Nott had withdrawn, leaving through a narrow opening in the door back to the Castle. 

Draco waited with the putrid stench of Troll in his throat and mouth. 

Nott returned after a few minutes and gave him a quick nod, holding the door open for him.

“Thanks,” said Draco as he passed. 

The inside of Hogwarts was very different.  The old banners and tapestries had been ripped off the walls, to leave pale spots of stone where their shadow remained.  It felt like all of the lights had been dimmed, and all of the color zapped from the space.  He took a tentative step inside the Castle.  He didn’t know where the Dark Lord was but the silence of the place was unnatural.  Where were the students? Their happy talk during meal times?  Where was the pounding of a hundred feet running up and down the stairs? The high laughter of the first years?  The break-up arguments that echoed around the Castle from the older students? 

He could hear nothing at all except the sound of his own breathing.  And then the voice came to him:

Draco

Involuntarily he flinched.

At the top of North Tower, Draco.

It was proving difficult to clear his mind.  Even all the training that Aunt Bellatrix had bestowed on him was not helping. The way up to that tower felt so eerily familiar.  It was here that so much had ended for him.  He remembered that night perfectly: standing before Dumbledore, shaking like the schoolboy he was, his wand held loosely in his hand.  What had he been playing at? 

He needed to arrive there with perfect composure, so pushed Dumbledore out of his mind.  He pushed Harry out too. The image of him chasing them through the night, the red sparks coming from his wand like fireworks.  He thought only of the cold angular face of the Dark Lord and the book in his arms.  Slowly, he felt himself compartmentalize.  Push everything unseemly away into invisible drawers in his head, and then wheel them out of sight.

By the time his footsteps were echoing up the stairwell he was perfectly presentable: empty and loyal. 

He bowed as soon as he was in his presence, keeping his eyes low, so that he could only see the swishing movements of the Dark Lord’s robe rather than the unnatural red of his eyes.  “My Lord,” he said.

“Draco,” the voice was cold, and something in him longed to shuffle away from it, but he held his ground.

“I found it.” He gripped the book in his sweaty hands.  “I had the notes from my ancestors going back generations, but it still took a long time – and –”  he looked down at his maimed hand.  “It was harder than I anticipated, but now I have brought it back to you-“ he stretched out an arm, offering him the book. 

It was snatched from him in a swift motion and Draco’s eyes flickered upward.  The Dark Lord’s face was skeletal, and pale as bone, ageless, deathless.  He dropped his eyes again after a single moment, as if that brief vision was too much. 

For a few minutes they stood in silence, with only the sound of the turning pages between them and then the Dark Lord spoke again: “This very well done, Draco.”

“Thank you.” At that moment some inherited instinct told him to look up.  He raised his head, meeting those terrifying red eyes.  They made him feel like a small child, gazing up at his father, terrified and intimidated.  He knew that with this stare the Dark Lord was entering his mind, he was rummaging through his thoughts, picking up images, feelings, places.  Draco was good at hiding, at compartmentalizing, it was a skill he had developed all his life, but this was the most powerful wizard in the world and there was only so much that could be hidden from him. 

After a minute or so the corners of Voldemort’s mouth twitched upward, into a most unnatural smile.  “What would you like in return?”

“Return?”

The unnatural smile widened grotesquely.  “I will always reward good service.”

He had not expected or prepared for this.  There was nothing really that he wanted, not anymore.   Looking ahead at his future all he saw for himself was his father’s life.  Wouldn’t he become the same sort of man? Marry some pureblood heiress? Work at the ministry? Claim to be among the Dark Lord’s inner circle but quietly flinch every time his name was mentioned? 

“I want – ” he stopped, wetting his lips.  “To go home.”

“A very meek request, I did not expect this.”

“I haven’t been well, not since the Battle.  And now-” he looked at his maimed hand.  “I am worse.  I would like to take some time to recuperate before continuing to your service.”

“That is agreeable to me –” his eyes were on the book again.  “I did not expect this item to really exist, nor did I expect you to be able to find it.  You have served me very well, Draco.  I think you have a great future ahead of you.”

He bowed his head.  “I hope so, my Lord.”

Lord Voldemort put a bone-white hand upon his shoulder.  His touch was slow, weak even, and yet it seemed to weigh Draco down like an anchor.

-

Grudgingly Draco returned to Malfoy Manor.  He apparated to the familiar gate, turned the lock and then walked the long pathway to the front door, dragging his feet.  His father’s garden had been restored, the rose hedge blooming, the sculpted bushes lush and glossy under the morning sun.  But it did not feel the same – not at all.  This place meant nothing to him anymore, it was no home, not really. 

He knocked at the door, like a stranger, and a moment later Narcissa appeared, pulling him into her arms.  “What did the Dark Lord say,” she whispered with urgency. 

“He was happy, and he will allow me some time away from his service to recuperate my strength.”

She smiled and pulled his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles.  “Good, that will be very good for you.”

The scene was interrupted by Lucius’s entrance.  As always, he was dressed so grandly that he looked a little ridiculous – his robes violet, little black and silver flowers embroidered along the long sleeves.  He did not smile when he saw Draco, but there was certainly surprise in his eyes, and he opened up his arms wide as if to embrace him.  Then he noticed Draco’s maimed hand.  “What happened?”

“An accident, nothing more,” he answered quickly. 

“Ah! Well, you will have to tell us all about your little adventures .”

This was the last thing on earth that he wanted to do, and as always Narcissa seemed to sense this.  She moved to her husband’s side, pressing her hand to his shoulder. “And he shall, love, but not right now.  He is very weak and tired.  He is also quite shaken from his meeting with the Dark Lord; he does not yet have your endurance and fortitude.” He puffed up his chest at these words, like a pigeon.  She kissed his cheek softly, going on her tiptoes to do so.  “He will tell us all another day, for now it is best to let him rest.”

“Very well, he is only a boy after all. I’m sure being alone in the presence of the Dark Lord must have affected him.”

“It has,” her hand slid from his arm, and her silver eyes found Draco. “I will put him to bed and then come to you..”

She walked besides Draco up the stairs.  When they reached the entrance of his bedroom, she stopped and lay a hand on his forearm so that he would as well. “What?” he whispered. 

From the sleeve of her dress she pulled out her wand.  She pointed it at his head and then there was a flash of white light.  For an instant he thought that she had cursed him – and then everything came back.  It was not a slow trickle: it all appeared with the flash of the light.  Not only the memories and the thoughts, but the feelings.  The incredible anticipation and longing that he had just to be in a room with Harry again. 

“Is he in here?” he said, nudging his head towards his bedroom.

She nodded. “He has been asking for you.”

He entered the room, wanting to shut the door behind him, but Narcissa slipped before he could.  

Harry was sitting at the edge of his bed, looking at them as they entered.  “I’m sorry I had to leave,” said Draco, going to him and falling to his knees in front of him.   Harry made no answer, but he looked at him with that one green eye.  Now that they were close again, Draco felt all his amazement and gratitude renewed.  Harry was perfect.  His hair just right.  His features fully restored. Even the way the light and shadow of the room went across his face, it felt natural, perfect.  He was alive, and his, and it was more than Draco could have ever wished for. 

Gently he put his hand on the other boy’s knee.  “We’re going to stay here for a while, is that okay with you?”

Harry’s eye went to Narcissa, who was standing just by the door.  For a moment Draco thought he would ask her to get out, but he only nodded. 

“And you will make sure father does not find out?” he said, turning reluctantly from Harry to look at her.

“Yes.  Diri shall be in on the secret as well, that is safest.”

“Agreed.”  He looked up at Harry’s face again.  He had to contain himself.  He wanted so badly  to touch him, to hug him, to feel the same warmth that he had felt from him last night.  “Is there anything you want Harry? Anything we can get you?”

Moving as in slow motion his hand touched Draco’s shoulder, lightly at first, but then he pinched at the fabric of his robes, gripping them in his fist.  And that was all the answer Draco needed.  He turned again to Narcissa.  “Leave,” he told her without ceremony.  For a moment she held her ground, staring at him with those grey eyes that said so little, but then she retreated.

When the door was closed Draco looked up at Harry again.  “We’re safe now, it’s just us.”

Harry smiled down at him, and Draco saw that he now had teeth, white and perfect, instead of that gapping empty blackness.  He stretched his hand as if to touch him and then thought better of it.  “Did my mother?”

He nodded, his messy black hair swishing down. 

Draco pressed his forehead against Harry’s thigh and closed his eyes.  He wanted to treasure this moment, to let it linger with him.  Everything was suddenly right in the world again.  A moment later he felt Harry’s hand go into his long hair, his fingers running through it ever so gently. 

They sat like that for a long time in the silence of his childhood bedroom.  Draco could not remember ever feeling this content or at peace.  It didn’t really matter what they would do now, simply being together was enough, more than enough. 

Hogwarts had never been home, and Malfoy Manor was certainly no home to him anymore. Home was this person, who he adored.  And Draco knew that the rest of his life, however long or short it be, would be tied to him. 

Chapter 5

Hours later they lay facing each other on his bed, their knees bent and just touching. 

“What was it like?” Draco whispered, finally feeling like it was time to break their silence. 

“Quiet…still,” Harry replied, his one green eye fixed on Draco’s maimed hand.

“Sad?”

He shook his head.  “No, just empty.  You don’t feel things, really.”

“I felt like that without you.  Everything was meaningless.”  He reached over and grabbed Harry’s hand, intertwining their fingers.  The gesture felt so right, like two perfect puzzle pieces coming together.  “I really couldn’t stand it.”

The edges of Harry’s mouth lifted into another smile.  “Now you won’t have to.”  His voice was so gentle as he said those words.  It sounded almost nothing like the voice he remembered.

Draco squeezed his hand tight.  He was going to get to see Harry in situations he never had before.  He was going to fill his head with happy memories of them, to overwrite all the violence, and hatred, and bickering.  They were going to be together, to have a happily ever after, like heroes did in fairy tales.  Like Cepheus’s had in his mother’s story. 

He moved closer to Harry on the bed, shrinking the distance between them.  They lay on the same pillow, and he put his arm around him.  Natural as ever, Harry lay his head on Draco’s shoulder, shuffling his body slightly downward until they were comfortably tucked into each other.  Draco kissed the top of his head, Harry’s messy hair tickling his nose. 

At that moment, and for the first time in his life, he found himself without anything to long for.  This was it – this was all he wanted. 

-

His dreams were nasty.  They involved bloodshed, and inferi, and Voldemort’s horrific red eyes staring at him from the inside of a sarcophagus.  He sat bolt upright as he woke, staring in confusion at the room around him.  He was relieved to see Harry, still in bed next to him, curled up like a cat, his head resting on his own arm. 

At least that was okay, Draco thought as he began to gather himself. 

They had not eaten anything last night, neither of them had had any appetite, or any desire to let others into their room.  Narcissa had come knocking, of course, but he hadn’t wanted to see her.  His day was to be filled only with Harry. 

He slumped out of bed, still fully dressed, and walked over to the window, pushing the Slytherin green curtains away.  It was early in the morning, just before dawn, the sky that strange electric blue that only seems to happen around 5 o’clock. 

His stomach rumbled as he stood and, grudgingly, he went over to the small silver bell that they used to summon the house elf.  He rang it and heard Harry toss in bed.  A second later Diri had appeared. She was a young elf, with pointed ears, huge blue eyes, and a mouth that always trembled with apprehension. 

“Young Master,” she said with a little bow.

“I will have my meals sent up from now on-” he commanded her.  “Bring some of everything, and tea and coffee, too.”

“Of course, Young Master,” she said with another low bow. 

“I take it that mother talked to you?”

The house elf looked down at their bare feet.  “About Mr. Malfoy?”

“Yes.”

She nodded.  “I am not to tell Mr. Malfoy anything about the Young Master.”

“Very well, you may go.”

She apparated away with a crack and he moved back to bed. 

He felt filthy in his clothes, and one by one stripped them off, leaving them puddled on the floor.  He got into bed in only his underwear and, at once, Harry moved towards him, as if drawn by his warmth.  He lay his arms around his waist, both facing the same wall, Harry’s head positioned right at the crook of his neck and shoulder.  “Who was that?”

“House elf?”

“Dobby?”

“No, her name is Diri”

Harry made a small sound. 

In truth, Draco was not sure how much Harry remembered of the time before, nor was he certain that he wanted to ask him.  Talking seemed almost unnecessary, like they were in some deep understanding beyond it.  He pushed that thought away as well, grateful that Harry wasn’t arguing about elf rights or anything like that.  Instead he ran his fingers lightly up and down Harry’s forearm, feeling the softness of his hair and the smoothness of his skin. 

He didn’t notice that he had drifted off again until the door opened.  Once again, he jumped up in bed, looking around.  Harry was awake, and Diri was entering the room two large trays levitated by her side. 

“Masters,” she said with a bow as she set the trays on a table.

“Right,” said Draco, his hand smoothing his hair.  He was very jumpy and his heart was pounding.  “Are you hungry?”

Harry gave a shrug.

“I’m not either, but I think we need to eat.” 

They got out of bed together.  Harry was still wearing all his clothes and, suddenly self-conscious, Draco summoned his bathrobe from the other side of the room.  He draped it over himself as they took their places at the table.  Diri bowed and left with another crack and Draco surveyed the dishes she had left behind.  She had done a good job: there was bread and fruit, eggs prepared in 4 different ways, sausages, beans, waffles, pancakes, muffins, and many different pots of tea. 

“What do you like?”

“I’m not picky.”

Draco poured them each tea and then grabbed a few pieces of fruit and some toast.  He ate slowly, looking up at Harry every few minutes. 

Harry had a plate full of food, but instead of eating he was just moving it around with his fork. 

“Not hungry?”

“I-”  Harry looked up from his plate of food.  “I don’t know, I don’t really feel my body very well.”

“You don’t feel hunger?”

“I just don’t feel connected to any of it-”  he looked down at his chest. “I recognize it as my body, and I know that I can move it, but it’s like when it’s very cold and you can’t feel your fingertips.”

“Like your body is numb?”

Harry nodded, and then asked in a smaller voice.  “Do I have a stomach?”

“Yes,” said Draco automatically, although the truth was that he didn’t know.  Suddenly the image of the revolting black organs came into his head, the way they had been the night of the ritual, putrid and spoiled, floating through the sky.  He set his fork down, nausea rising inside of him. 

“Are you okay?”

 “Yeah.  Look, I’m not hungry either.  Let’s both of us just eat some and then we can go back to bed.”

Obligingly, Harry did so.  He had half a plate of food and then moved on to the tea. Draco managed to finish his fruit, but the toast was beyond him.  When they had both finished, he vanished all the mess, not wanting the smell to continue in the room.  “How are you feeling?”

Harry shrugged.  “Okay, I think.”

“Do you want to do something? Or should we go back to bed.”

“I’m tired,” Harry whispered. 

Draco reached across the table and grabbed a hold of his hand.  He walked him to the bed and, before getting in, undressed him down to his underwear.  His body was full of scars, everywhere the flesh had been pieced together by magic was red and raw.  But even so, he was beautiful, lithe, lean, and small. 

They went under the blanket together, so close that it was difficult to know what warmth was Harry and what warmth was his own limbs intertwined with Harry’s.  It was easy to close his eyes, and effortless to fall asleep again. 

-

This time he woke up gently.  He knew exactly where he was, and as he came to, he nuzzled closer to Harry, putting his forehead against the other boy’s shoulder.  It was so wonderful to rest like this.  For months he had been living off minimal sleep, he had been so focused on his goal.  Now, laying in bed with him felt so luxurious. 

He sat up.  His bedroom was pitch black and he had no sense of what time, or even what day, it was.  He stretched his arms up and twisted his neck from side to side ‘til he heard a crack.  Next to him Harry was awake, his one green eye staring at him through the dark.   

“Did you sleep?”

Harry nodded his head. “You?”

“Yeah, and I didn’t dream this time.”  He got out of bed, his body heavy and sore.  He felt like he used to after getting really sick as a child – sweaty and gross, with too many human needs to accurately address any. “Are you hungry?”

“No.”

“Me neither.”  He ran his fingers through his shoulder length hair. It was greasy at the top and full of knots in the back.   He really needed to take a bath.  

Draco glanced at Harry on the bed.  He was laying on his back, his one eye on Draco, the sheet leaving him bare from the waist up.  His eyes ran down the scars at his neck, at each of his arms, and the redness of his torso where he had been ripped open.  Then he looked down at his own chest, where the marks Harry had left on him still stood out against his pale skin.  

“Draco?” Harry whispered.

“Wanna take a bath?”

The bathroom had been designed by his father.  It was grandiose, with black marble and low hanging chandeliers bearing candles that illuminated the room in a soft green light.  There was a spacious shower, which included a place to sit down and a dozen glass bottles of products for his body and hair.  But the real attraction of the room was the very large bathtub. It was nearly as large as the Prefect’s bathroom at Hogwarts.  Next to it was a neat pile of soft, fluffy towels and, close to them, more jars of products and salts. 

Draco leaned down and began running the water, checking the temperature was correct, while Harry stood behind him.  Draco could see him through the large mirror on the opposite wall – he was staring at the space, as if taking it all in: from the golden framed mirrors, to the giant tub, to the beautiful and delicate oil paintings that hung on the wall. 

“This room is yours?” he said quietly. 

“Yeah.  My father had it redone while I was in my first year.  He wanted it to be a surprise for me.  Theirs is even bigger, if you’ll believe it-” He tried to sound casual.  The truth was, he was uncertain of what the standards were for other people. What they thought of as ‘nice’.  All of his friends were rich, not as rich as he was, but significantly more than anyone Harry knew.  “Did you have your own bathroom when you lived with the Muggles?”

For a second it seemed that Harry did not understand the question and Draco was wondering if he remembered that part of his life at all. Then he said: “No, I didn’t. They didn’t like me very much.”

Draco stood up.  He had always been curious about Harry’s life before, but he didn’t know if it was intrusive to ask.  “Did you like them?”

He shook his head vehemently.

“I – ”  Draco stopped himself.  He had been about to say something about his parents but then realized how tactless that would be.  Who was he to complain? His parents had given him everything. 

Harry’s hand reached out and touched his forearm, just where the Dark Mark was.  Their eyes found each other and, again, Draco had that sense that speech was unnecessary between them, like they were connected. It was not legilimency, or some potion.  This was a true and perfect understanding.  Draco shifted closer to him, putting his head on the other’s shoulder.  “You know.”

“I do,” said Harry quietly. 

When the water had reached about halfway Draco began putting in salts and bubbles and flower petals, a process Harry observed with some curiosity.  He seemed more interested in this than he had in anything else so far.  It was good to see. 

By the time he finished with his favorite combinations the bath was almost full, thick pink and white bubbles streaming in the surface.  Draco ran a hand sheepishly through his hair.  It was quite ridiculous to be self-conscious about taking off his underwear, since Harry had already seen him naked, but he was.  He took them off as quickly as possible and immediately entered the water. 

He turned his back on Harry, wondering if he also wanted a little privacy.  A few moments later he heard splashing and felt the weight of another person in the water.  Draco looked back at him over his shoulder.  His wet hair was flat for once and his hands were full of bubbles.  “I used to take baths like this all the time when I came home from school,” said Draco, consciously trying to fill the silence. 

“I like them, too.”

“Humans should devise a way to spend more time under water.”

That earned him a smile.  They moved to face each other in the water, a generous space between them.  The air smelled of lavender and eucalyptus.  It was almost dreamlike to see Harry like this, relaxed, off his guard, the shimmering bubbles reflected in his green eye. 

“We have to get you glasses,” said Draco suddenly.  “And-” he paused, almost afraid to ask.  “Is there anything else you want?”

For a moment Harry considered him, then he shook his head. 

Draco waddled in the water, trying hard not just to look at Harry.  It was hard though; it felt like his eyes were magnetized to him.  He dipped his head down into the water, feeling his hair gain weight and float around him.   He closed his eyes.  He loved the dimness of this room most of all.  It had always made him feel like he was hiding, like he was safe from others.  This had been the only room in his house that was really only for him. 

Soon, Harry was floating next to him.  Their shoulders and arms bumping together.  Over the surface of the water they held hands; bubbles squished between their fingers.  “It feels so good having you here,” he said, his eyes shut tight.  He would be too cowardly to speak those words if they were facing each other. “I mean, I don’t want to stay here forever, but for a while-” he squeezed his hand.  “We can just stay quiet and hidden here.”

“With lots of baths.”

Draco laughed.  “Yeah, with lots of baths.”

-

For a full week they lived inside his room.  This was the longest Draco had ever been confined to such a small place and yet it didn’t feel like this encroached, in any way, on his freedom.  In fact, he really didn’t care.  As long Harry was with him, he was certain he could live in a box if he had to. 

They formed a comfortable little routine.  They slept in most mornings – lying in bed for hours after they had woken up.  These mornings were the best and sweetest part of his day.  Sometimes they would just hold each other; other times they have whispered conversations, like schoolboys afraid to be overheard.  Draco often talked about his family, and Harry described death over and over and over again, as if this was the only thought in his head. 

Sometimes, Draco would ask a pointed question: “Did you hate me when we were at school together?”

And Harry would always answer with total candor, as if lying was beyond him. “No, but I was scared of you.”

“Scared?”

He nodded against his pillow.  “I didn’t understand, you know.”

Another time he asked about Harry’s childhood.  “Do you remember your parents at all?”

He answered with a  shake of his head.  “I remember the night they died, and his laugh, and the flash of green light, nothing else-” as he finished talking, he reached over and grabbed Draco’s hand, pulling it against his chest. 

After their long morning in bed they would eat, although neither had developed an appetite yet.  Draco stuck to fruits for the most part.  Harry ate a little of everything, but almost like he didn’t taste it.   They both enjoyed the tea though.  And he liked seeing Harry’s face as he tried the different types until he settled on a hibiscus as his favorite.  

Then came bath time, another activity that stretched on for hours.  They would soak in the water together, sometimes quiet and almost sleeping, sometimes engaging in silly conversation.  Draco did most of the talking, but Harry chimed in with comments.  They talked about Quidditch, and trips to Hogsmeade, and all the particular moments they had shared. 

“Which do you remember best?” 

“Bathroom,” said Harry, his eye on Draco’s chest beneath the cover of bubbles. 

“Oh.”

Harry stretched out a hand gracing Draco’s collarbone.  Delicately he moved downward until he was tracing the marks he had left on his skin.  “That’s the worst thing I ever did to anyone.”

“It wasn’t so bad-” Draco said without really thinking about it.  That day seemed like ages ago and whatever he had felt then, whatever fear and panic and pain, had faded.  He didn’t want Harry to carry any guilt over it.

“I could have-” he didn’t finish the sentence but they both knew what he meant. 

“You also saved me, remember?” he said, using the fingers on his good hand to tuck a strand of wild black hair behind Harry’s ear.  “In the Room of Requirement?”

“I wouldn’t have just let you…”

It was Draco who didn’t answer this time.  They were very close together, Harry’s hand on his chest and his on Harry’s bony shoulder.  Even though they did it constantly, he never quite got used to touching him.  Even simple things like holding hands or brushing back his hair felt exhilarating. He moved his maimed hand down to the small of Harry’s back, pulling him closer.  They pressed against each other under the water, Harry’s arms going around his shoulders, their foreheads touching. 

Draco  stared at his lips, pink and wet with water, then looked back at that one green eye as if asking for permission.  Harry didn’t say anything, but he did lean forward, kissing him. 

In the afternoon they usually went through his bedroom. 

It had started with showing Harry a book Draco had loved as a little boy.  Harry had taken an interest in the doodles in the margins of some of the pages, which included a caricature of Fudge and a dancing teacup.  This was an old habit of Draco’s that he had never managed to break.  Slowly, they began going through all his books and journals, looking for more little drawings.  Many were Quidditch themed and there was one in particular that they both stopped and stared at for a long time.  It was two figures facing each other on broomsticks.  It had few details, the black ink figures merely silhouettes, and neither player had a face, but just from the hair it was easy to see who Draco was thinking about. 

“When did you make this?”

“I think that was in fourth year.”

Harry traced Draco’s likeness on the page with the tip of his finger and Draco felt a jolt of something.  He remembered himself at 14, angry and scared, masking it oh so well behind a façade of arrogance.  He really wondered what his past self would have said if he could see them at this moment.  If he could have known everything that was to happen. 

In the evening they sat by the largest window in his bedroom. Draco would make lit candles float around them and they would play chess and cards in the semi darkness.  Both of them were rather careless players, more interested in the game than in being clever.  It was strange to Draco that, despite 7 years of fierce competition between them, neither cared if they won or lost.  

Before bed they would have another meal, this one by candlelight. 

Draco was trying to get them both to eat more, but it was a struggle. He could usually manage some broth and a bit of bread.   Harry ate looking at the plate and going section by section automatically until it was empty again.  Sometimes he would grimace, as if eating were painful for him.

In bed they kept close to each other, resting on the same side, arms over and around each other until they grew numb and tingly.  The darkness of the night emboldened them.  Draco traced Harry’s lips and kissed his scars, Harry’s fingers running through his hair.  Draco was not inexperienced by any means, but this was a totally different intimacy than the one he knew.  It was not a rush or a passion, it was not desire, or lust.  Whatever happened between them was slow, and careful, and loving . 

Draco would stay awake late into the night, watching him breathing.  Watching this miraculous boy who had survived so much, and had chosen, was choosing every day, to remain by his side.  Draco had always thought he knew what love was.  His parents surely loved him.  His parents surely loved each other.  And plenty of other people had loved him: Pansy, and Crabbe, and Goyle.  It was only now that he was realizing the falseness of this assumption. 

Loving someone, really truly loving someone, could not coexist with wanting things from them.  Love was not a negotiation; it was an absolute.  At school, his friends had followed him, but wasn’t that largely because of his status? Because of his money? Because of his looks? And if that were true, then how could he have ever thought that it was love?

Even his parents, as much as it hurt to say so, had never really loved him.  Would they have loved him if he weren’t a Slytherin? If he hadn’t had a pureblood girlfriend? If he hadn’t been a great student? All of these conditions were requirements for their continuing affection and support. Take them away and no, his parents did not love him. 

He could just imagine the look of disappointment on Lucius’s face if he had been sorted into Hufflepuff, or if he hadn’t made the Quidditch team, or if he had brought some boy over to meet the family instead of Pansy.  His father would have been irate.  He would have disowned him.  So, surely, that was not love.  Even Narcissa, who he knew would do anything in the world for him, had her limits and if the time came for her to choose between him and Lucius, he was not certain that he would be her first choice.  She was dedicated to the old order of things, and despite the fact that she ruled him and manipulated him every chance she got, she still thought her main job in life was to service her husband. 

With Harry everything was different.  This was someone who wanted nothing from him.  This was someone who loved him despite all the ways in which he had fucked up and all the ways in which he had hurt him.  There was no pretending with him.  No mask to put on. Draco could just be himself, contrary and broken as he was. 

His love for Harry was also a different thing, incomparable with any sentiments he had had for others.  He loved Harry in his entirety and without question.  He loved the Harry of his memories, quick to anger, quick to act, always in the middle of some mischief.  But he also loved the Harry who lay next to him, peaceful and sleepy, and, more likely than not, dreaming of death.  This Harry who was gentle, and hurt, and a smaller version of his old self, just like Draco was. 

There was something healing about them being together.  As if kisses in the dark could cure everything rotten that had happened to both of them.  As if talking about his doodles would erase all the ways in which they had both failed.  Their intimacy was not based on sex or physicality, instead it was a complete understanding, and a complete trust. 

He was not exactly happy.  Happiness seemed beyond him.  His dreams were still haunted by blood and decay.  The missing fingers of his hand ached.  He worried about his father.  And next to him, human as he might be, alive as he might feel, Harry was not quite himself.  But what they had here was safe, and precious, and loving .  And Draco was determined to be grateful for every moment, for every day. 

-

One morning Draco woke up abruptly with the sense that something was wrong.  His eyes shifted over to the shadowy figure beside him.  Harry was sat up, his shoulders squared and stiff, one of his hands  up to his mouth.  “Harry?” he whispered, gently laying a hand on the other’s shoulder.  Harry lurched forward violently and vomited all over the sheets.

Draco grabbed his wand from the nightstand and murmured lumos, sending a harsh white light over the scene. 

He had thought that Harry was sick – maybe he had eaten something that hadn’t agreed with him.  Instead, Harry was sitting there, his mouth dripping with blood, the green sheets stained red all around them.  Draco blinked against the light, suddenly questioning if this was really reality or another of his disturbed dreams. 

Harry gave another lurch forward and more blood spouted – too much blood. 

“Did something happen?”

Harry shook his head and made to speak but another bout of blood came out. 

The bed was drenched in red, pools of it in the crevices that their bodies made on the mattress.  The sheets soaked it up hungrily, and as he watched he could see the red spreading through the sheets towards him like a disease.  He got out of bed and dashed to Harry’s side.

He was pale, with one hand still held against his mouth, sticky with blood.  “Does something hurt?” said Draco as he pushed the wet sheets away from his body, trying to see if any of his scars had burst open, or if he had any bruising that might explain this.

“I don’t feel anything-” he said, more blood coming out of his mouth with each word.

Draco peeled the entirety of the wet sheet off of him.  He was wearing underwear and nothing else, his body thin and familiar.  There were no new bruises or markings of any kind. Whatever was happening was internal.  Again, the nauseating image of Harry’s blackened organs floating out of the grave came through his head and he had to stop himself from being sick. 

He had to think, he had to figure out something to do.  His wand was still in his hand.  Surely he knew some spell that would be helpful, something that would fix whatever was happening.  He looked at Harry’s face. There was no panic and there was no pain; he could not even see helplessness in his expression.  It was maybe a little surprising, but that was all. 

“I don’t know what to do,” said Draco, more to himself than to Harry. 

He did not know how much blood the average human had, but this looked like a lot of blood. Like a dangerous amount of blood. In fact, the last time he had seen this much blood had probably been that day in the bathroom when Harry had almost killed him.  This was critical, an emergency in every sense of the word.  And yet, what was he supposed to do? He didn’t know any magic that could heal this.

Suddenly he went over to the house elf bell and rang it.  An instant later Diri appeared, already in a bow.  “You – keep him alive-” he said pointing back at Harry.

The elf gave a squeal and then rushed to the bed.

“I’ll be right back Harry,” said Draco, approaching the bed. “We’ll figure out what’s happening.  You’ll be okay again.”

Harry had no reaction to this.  Maybe he couldn’t even understand what Draco was saying.

He ran out of his room, not caring that he was only wearing underwear, not caring that there was blood on him.  With his lit wand ahead of him he dashed through the hallways, his ancestors in their portraits shouting after him.  When he reached his parent’s bedroom door, he pounded at it, loud enough to wake the dead. 

When neither appeared instantly, he kicked at it, shouting whatever words came into his head. 

His father was the first to appear.  “What in Merlin’s name-” he began, but he stopped when he saw Draco.  His eyes went wide, looking at the blood and then at the wild, desperate look in his eyes. 

Without thinking twice about it, Draco raised his wand and shot a stunning spell at him, knocking him backwards into the room.  He could hear shuffling from within, and something that sounded like a gasp: “Draco?”

“I need you,” he said, throwing both of the doors open.  “Now.”

His mother was crouching by Lucius’s body, wearing a silky night gown that reached the floor. “Now!” he yelled again. 

She looked at him appraisingly and then, to his relief, got up.  They went through the corridors at a run. Draco noted that the portraits were all empty this time, and he could just picture all his puny, detestable ancestors crowding around the pictures in his room, hungry for disaster. 

When they entered, Harry was flat against the bed.  Diri was by his side.  The blood had all been cleaned off, but he was deathly pale and his eye was closed.  “What happened to him?” said Narcissa as she looked from him to Draco.

“I don’t know.  He just woke up bleeding.”

She shoved the house elf out of her way and lay a hand against Harry’s forehead.  Then she lowered her hand checking his pulse at his throat.  She knelt by him, withdrawing her wand from an inside pocket and tracing over him.  It emitted a low blue light as it hovered over his torso.  She turned her head to look at Draco and said: “Has he had pain?”

“No, he says he doesn’t feel anything.”

She turned back, moving her wand across him again.  “Get my essence of Dittany,” she commanded the elf.  With a snap Diri disappeared and they were left alone.  Draco stumbled towards the bed. 

“Is he going to be okay?”

“I don’t know-” she answered, her eyes on Draco rather than Harry.  “I can’t have you running around and cursing your father.”

“And I can’t have him knowing anything about this,” Draco retorted, gesturing towards Harry.

“Leave him to me. I can wipe his memory as well as I wiped yours.”  She narrowed her eyes threateningly.  “Don’t you dare disrespect him like that again.”

This was simply not the time to get into an argument with her and Draco knew that.  “I won’t-” he said, unsure if he actually meant those words or not. 

A second later Diri appeared again, holding a small, clear vial.  Narcissa pulled on Harry’s jaw, opening up his mouth and pouring droplets of the clear liquid within.

“Is that safe?” said Draco, taking another step towards them.  He remembered Madam Pomfrey using it on him, but for external wounds.  He had never heard of anything taking it orally.

Narcissa ignored him.  She cast another spell and the blue came back for a moment.  Slowly, she rose to her feet again, turning to look at him.  “I don’t think he’s going to last, Draco.”

“You’re lying,” it was the first words that came to him, and they came without him taking any time to think. 

“He’s going to survive tonight, but he’s not stable.”

“You’re wrong-” his voice shook noticeably. 

“He might have weeks or months, or maybe a year, but he’s not going to be with you forever.”

Draco’s eyes burned. “Get out of here. Leave.”

Calmly, she walked over to stand by him, one of her hands reaching out and touching his shoulder.  He moved out of her grasp.  “I am not saying this to hurt you, my love.   I am only saying it to remind you that this will not be forever.” Her eyes went back to the bed again.  “Enjoy this for now, but afterwards,” she gave a shrug.  “Your life will still be waiting for you; me, and your father, and the Dark Lord.” She stretched out her hand again and wrapped it around his wrist.  “It doesn’t make sense to alienate everybody for him.”

“You don’t know, you don’t understand.”

She smiled.  “I’m only trying to help you.”

On the bed Harry stirred and Draco’s attention was diverted. 

“All I want is your happiness, my love,” she said, and she kissed each of his cheeks.  “I will try to help him any way I can.  I will try to extend this for you, but it won’t be forever.”

He barely heard the words; he was already moving towards Harry.

“Ungrateful boy,” he heard one of the old men in the portrait say. 

“No sense of family, really,” a nasally woman added.

“Such a disappointment,” said a third. 

Draco knelt by the bed, trying not to hear their discussion. 

Harry opened his eyes, staring first at Narcissa and then at Draco beside him.

“Are you alright?” he whispered, finding Harry’s hand and holding it in his own. 

“I guess,” he whispered. 

“I’m leaving you now, Draco,” said Narcissa.  She held out the clear vial.   “I’ll leave this with you.  He should be having a few drops every day.”

He didn’t even turn to see her go, instead he lay his head against Harry’s shoulder.  He didn’t even know what he was feeling, if it was panic, or exhaustion, fear, or disgust.  The room still smelled of blood, and Harry looked so small, so weak.  It made him feel like everything he had been working towards could have just been taken away, like it was nothing, while he slept.  And what if Narcissa was right?  What if this was all temporary? 

He shook the last thought out of his head.  If Cepheus had kept his wife for decades, Draco was certain he could do the same with Harry.  He felt Harry’s hand cup his cheek, his fingers wiping away his tears.

-

He never managed to fall asleep again that night.  Harry slumbered quietly, curled up on his bed and Draco watched him, seated on the window.  Nothing like this could happen again.  He was not gonna let Harry die.

This was a fresh start for them.  It was meant to be a life of pleasant things. Long baths, and games, and them being able to enjoy each other’s company without rivalries or politics getting in the way.  Now all of that was threatened.  And what could he do about it other than take Narcissa’s advice? Once again, he cursed himself for handing over the book.  Maybe there was more to this spell than what he had read.  Maybe parts of it had to be performed again and again, and now he would never know. 

How had he been so stupid? So naïve? And what was there left to do about it now? 

Carelessly, he swished the curtains out of place with his wand so he could stare down at the gardens.  Winter was coming – there was no doubt of this – but the gardens were evergreen.  He could even spot one of the white peacocks wandering about between the shrubbery.  He stayed still, watching the morning light filter in, golden at first, then dim. 

It was almost noon when Harry finally woke up.  “Draco?” he said, searching for him in the room. 

“I’m here,” he said, going to sit on the bed beside him.  “I was thinking, why don’t we go to gardens today? I think you’ll like them.”

-

After checking to make sure Lucius was still in bed, Draco and Harry set out.  The day was cold but pretty, with a breeze that fluttered through the invisibility cloak and against their cheeks.  They walked together closely, hidden beneath it, Draco’s arm protectively around Harry’s waist. 

“You sure you feel strong enough for this?” he asked for the third time.

“I don’t feel anything,” Harry answered, which was not very comforting. 

They walked slowly through the hedges.

Draco had spent the best parts of his childhood here. Playing with his mother, hiding from her, watching her pick flowers.  But seeing it with Harry felt like seeing it for the first time.   “That’s where I first remember doing magic,” Draco said fondly as he looked at one particular rose bush.  “I was three or four and I fell in.  But I didn’t get cut; it felt like I was floating for a moment, and then mum came.  Did you do magic like that?”

“Yeah.  Mostly as self-defence against the Dursleys, or the kids at school.  But of course, I didn’t know it was really magic.”

Draco couldn’t imagine that.  “What did you think it was?”

“Sometimes I thought I was just really lucky, other times I thought I was just strange.”

They continued walking until finding one of the benches, then took a seat, so close together that Harry was almost on his lap.  “I was really scared yesterday,” said Draco, dropping his voice.

“I saw.”

“You’re sure nothing hurts? Maybe something happened yesterday that triggered it?”

Harry gave him a look that was almost pitying and then said:  “I think it’s just part of this whole thing. A consequence.”

“I don’t want you to have any consequences. I’m the one who-”

“We don’t get to choose that,” said Harry, cutting him off.

It was true but absolutely the last thing he wanted to admit.  “Harry? Are you glad I did it?” He wasn’t sure he wanted an honest answer to this, but he had to ask it all the same. 

Harry leaned closer into him, intertwining their hands.  He lay against his chest, quiet, staring out at the garden beyond them.  Draco kept expecting him to speak, to elaborate, to mention the silence of death which evidently kept haunting him.  But after a long time, Harry remained silent. “You want to go back?” Draco asked, the words burning as they were spoken.

Harry moved even closer to him, but again there was no reply. 

“I did this so that we would be h-happy-” he found himself struggling with the words, as if they were in a foreign language.  “But if you’d rather-”

“No,” said Harry firmly.

“No?”

He shook his head and kissed him.  “No.”

-

A few days later it snowed for the first time that season.  Draco woke up alone in bed to see Harry standing by the window, gazing down at the snowy garden.  He walked over and wrapped his arms around his waist from the back, putting his chin on the other’s shoulder. “You shouldn’t be by the window,” he said, kissing his cheek to soften his words.

“Can we go out?” Harry asked. 

It was not in Draco to deny Harry anything.  He left to arrange things with his mother so that Lucius would be kept out of the way.  Then they walked out into the garden together, Harry under the cloak. 

It was cold, and perfect, snowflakes drifting in slow motion.  He stopped to take a deep breath of that cold air, which seemed to purity as it touched.  He was just thinking that this had been a very good idea when wham – he was hit by a well-aimed snowball right in the chest.

Draco was so surprised he jumped, looking around before remembering that Harry was invisible.  “I can’t believe you did that!”

Harry laughed. 

And Draco was treated to the bizarre sight of more snow being lifted up by an invisible force and then hurled at him.  Luckily, he moved out of the way just in time to avoid it, scooping up some snow of his own and aiming for where he thought Harry was. They played like this until they were both panting and exhausted, and then they lay down on the snow together, Harry’s lead on his lap. 

His hand crept underneath the cloak until he found Harry’s hand and gave it a squeeze. 

“It was a good idea to come out.”

“I like winter,” Harry replied. 

“I like you,” said Draco, poking at his shoulder with his bad hand. 

Harry gave another laugh.  “I like your shitty aim.”

“Hey!”

“No really, I mean that.”

“Well you’d have shitty aim too if your target was invisible.”

They bickered back and forth.  He was surprised by how animated Harry sounded, how much more like his old self.  This was the kind of day that made him think that the longer Harry was here, the more human he was going to become. 

That night however, when they undressed each other, Draco saw for the first time the black rot that had begun spreading on his toes. 

-

Weeks passed.  One after the other, the days all melting together, and all full of Harry.  Harry kicking him in bed while he slept.  Harry asking for bacon in the morning.  Harry kissing him as they walked through the frozen garden, their footsteps on the soft snow the only proof that they were really there.  Harry reading over his journals from school.  Harry laughing at his worst jokes. It was the happiest time of Draco’s life.  It was like he was getting to see Harry become human again, day by day. 

He started talking more.  Telling Draco all sorts of things that he had never imagined about the boy before.  About his cupboard, and his fear of dogs, about his first train ride to Hogwarts, and the picture album of his parents that Hagrid had given him at the end of first year.  Colour seemed to drain back into him and, with it, want.  He had been so passive the first few days, like a lost child.  But now he was making decisions and choices for himself.  There were things he didn’t want anymore, and things he wanted more of. 

They went outside every day now.  They made their way through the house, Draco pointing out every portrait and explaining how he was related to them, while his elders sneered and rolled their eyes.  They took books from his father’s library to entertain themselves at night and read them out loud to each other by wand light.  He suddenly craved pudding, and turkey, and wanted his eggs scrambled instead of sunny side up.  Every single time he asked for something Draco felt greater satisfaction in what he had done.  It didn’t feel so selfish anymore.  It wasn’t about him needing Potter, it was about them both needing each other, and now he was sure of it. 

He would have been perfectly happy – except – except…

There was no denying that there was something wrong with Harry.

Despite the Dittany he was taking, he now coughed blood regularly.  It had quickly been normalized by them, and Harry always said: “I don’t feel it really, it doesn’t hurt or anything.”  But it was growing increasingly alarming as it began happening on a daily basis. 

To add to that concern, there was the fact that his extremities would sometimes blacken.  They looked like they had gotten nasty frostbite and his only solution was to soak them in Dittany.  That seemed to solve the problem, but only temporarily.  It was also concerning that the rot seemed to be spreading.  Sometimes, when Harry stretched or scratched at his skin, Draco would get a whiff of the nauseating smell of rotten flesh. 

He didn’t know where, exactly, it was coming from, as Harry looked perfectly himself, but he kept remembering Narcissa’s warnings that this body that Draco had scarified so much to get was nothing but a temporary vessel.

Although they both tried their best to ignore these little failings, his dreams would not let him forget. Night had become torturous, with vivid nightmares that often left him shaking and vomiting.  Although he never told Harry so, he was sure that he knew his visions had to do with his corpse.  With each mangled limb moving across the night. With the smell of the grave he had dug up.  He even remembered the sensation of diving his hand into the puddle of flesh and organs, trying to dig out his knife.

In his dreams now he would wake, and turn around to embrace Harry, but instead of finding him as he was, he found him as a mangled body, ripped, shrunken organs and face that was no face at all.  It was terrifying. Both the idea of having lost him again, and the thought (the fear) that he would have to see his corpse one more time. 

“Is there really nothing you can do?” he asked Narcissa one night while Harry slept.  He had brought her to the library, showing her all the books that he had been sifting through, desperate for information. 

“Dittany is all I can think of,” she said quietly.  “Perhaps that book-”

“I know!” said Draco, so angry he wanted to throw something at her. Why had he let that book out of his grasp? Why had he not at least copied the pages?  Why had he just handed it over?

As if she knew exactly what he was thinking, Narcissa said: “You were very eager to be with him, you weren’t thinking straight.”

That was not what he wanted to hear either.  “Do you know anyone else who might be able to help us?”

“A healer, perhaps, but I don’t have any connections there, or at least none I could trust.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “We don’t need to trust them; I will deal with them after.”

A little smile played on her lips.  “You can kill everyone at St. Mungo’s for all I care, but I doubt they would have any information that could be useful to you.”

He slammed a book shut.  “Leave,” he ordered her. 

“As you wish, Draco,” she went on her tippy toes and kissed his cheeks.  “I don’t like seeing you this miserable, darling.  It isn’t good.  Why don’t you come to dinner with us tonight? He asks about you all the time.  It has been very difficult keeping him from your chambers.  I keep having to make false memories.  It is a lot of work.”

He rolled his eyes. “Nothing you’re not used to,” he muttered under his breath. 

“I’m only trying to be helpful.”

“Well then,” he said savagely. “Find me a solution.”

-

One morning Draco woke up to find Harry sitting cross legged in bed, his hand stretched out in front of him.  It was black – from the fingertips to the wrist – black like it was covered in charcoal, black like it had been burned to ashes.  Slowly, Draco sat up.  He knew what he had to do – mainly summon the Dittany – but he didn’t know if he should say something.  Did Harry understand what this meant?

“Does it-” Draco began before Harry cut him off.

“No,” he said simply, stretching out his hand for Draco to tend. 

He summoned the Dittany. They were going through vast amounts of it, which was, for one, very costly, and, for another, dangerous. Dittany was not something people needed large amounts of.  Narcissa had been purchasing it for him under disguises, but if anyone figured out who she really was there was going to be trouble.

He poured it into a silver bowl and Harry dipped his entire hand into it.  For a long time, they sat in silence.  Harry was looking out of the window.  Draco was watching the slow process of his hand turning back to normal.  Despite the fact that they were in bed, comfortable warm sheets around them, and the whole day open for them to enjoy, Draco had a nasty feeling it was all ruined already. 

After about an hour the hand was back to normal, but they left it there a bit longer.  “Do you want breakfast?” Draco muttered. 

 “I guess.”

Draco lay a hand on his shoulder, leaning in to kiss his cheek.  “It’s gonna be okay,” he whispered. 

As if to specifically prove him wrong, Harry lurched forward, vomiting blood.

-

In an effort to ignore the reality they were now living, Draco suggested one day that they fly.  “It’s your favorite thing-” he said to Harry playfully.  “You can have my Nimbus 2001, I’ll fly my old Comet 260.”

Harry looked at him.  “It’s not my favorite thing.”

“Yes, it is, come on, aren’t you dying to beat me at Quidditch?”

To this Harry leaned forward and kissed him.  “It’s not my favorite thing.” He repeated.

Draco could have purred. 

They did go flying that night, once darkness covered the grounds.   It was a risk, of course, and Narcissa had warned him against it, but Draco couldn’t be deterred.  He wanted to give Harry his best life – not just keep him locked up in his bedroom.  He could see Narcissa, a pale, disapproving statue, looking down at them from a high window as they left the house, her eyes burning into him. 

But it was worth it.  It was joyous to see Harry on a broomstick again, his hair wild and windswept, his face rosy from the cold and the exercise.  They flew as high as they dared and then chased each other, diving in impressive spirals, Harry significantly better due to the lag that had developed in his Comet.  They only started to go back inside when the first signs of sunrise came. 

“I wanna stay up here,” said Harry.  “It would be nice to watch the sunrise with you.”

“It would be,” Draco assured him, but he knew it wasn’t safe. 

They descended, and as soon as they landed, he heard a now familiar wet cough behind him.  He turned to see Harry casually mopping up the blood with his sleeve, red at the corner of his mouth.   He froze in place, the broomstick still in his hand.  He knew that this was normal, that it was happening every day, but it was another painful reminder that he had no idea how much longer they had together.

“What’s wrong?” said Harry, his eye on him. 

Draco gulped.  “Let’s watch the sunrise?”

“Really?”

“Yeah,” he pulled out his wand and summoned the invisibility cloak from his room.  It zoomed towards them.  If Narcissa was right, if their time really was limited, then he wasn’t gonna deny Harry anything.

They flew up to the roof of the Manor, just as the sky lightened.  They sat together, legs hanging down, the invisibility cloak snuggly around them.  It was the most beautiful morning of Draco’s life.  The sky was pink and gold, with perfectly formed clouds and a warmth that penetrated through the January gloom.  Harry had his head on Draco’s shoulders and their hands were together.  He ran his thumb through his smooth skin, not blackened, not dead. 

He almost wanted to cry, to freeze time, to be here, with Harry, forever. 

“Thank you,” Harry said when the sun had properly risen and the last glorious bits of dawn were given way. 

Draco kissed his forehead.  “I love you.”

He had never said it before.  He had always thought of it as a silly phrase. Love did not need to be spoken, it was something you felt, something you did.  But saying it didn’t feel silly anymore.  It felt important.  He needed Harry to know that he was loved, that Draco had and would continue to do anything in his power for him.  Anything at all. 

 Harry kissed him properly, his mouth warm and welcoming.

“I love you so much,” Draco repeated when they broke apart.  “I always did, you know, and I’m so sorry for everything before.”

Harry shook his head.  “You don’t have to apologize.”

“We could have had years.”

“I know.”

He lay his head against Draco’s shoulder.  “At least we got this time,” he said after a moment. 

It didn’t escape Draco’s notice that he was already speaking in past tense. 

-

“Can’t last much longer.”

“Wager he won’t make it to Easter.”

“Easter?! He won’t make it to Sunday.”

“Shut up!” Draco yelled, grabbing hold of the first thing within reach – an ugly but probably very expensive porcelain miniature – and throwing it with full force at the painting of the 3 witches brewing a cauldron that hung in the library. 

They screamed in unison, running from the scene.  Disgruntled, he turned back to the problem at hand.  Harry was lying on the floor of the library, covered in blood.  His legs had given way as they walked along the shelves, and he had tumbled down, his legs bent at unnatural angles. 

“Can you get up?” he asked, crouching by his side and automatically wiping the blood away with his wand. 

Harry shook his head. “No, my legs can’t hold me.”

Panic rose inside of him.  “What do you mean?”

“I just know they won’t hold me,” said Harry with another shake of his head. “They just – they just feel dead.”

Throwing caution to the wind he magicked the door of the library open and shouted for Narcissa.  “It’s gonna be fine,” he assured Harry, his hand feeling the boy’s thighs.  “It’s probably just temporary, a spasm or something-” his tone was not convincing, it was panicked and they both knew it.   He turned to the door again and shouted for her.  “Mum will know what to do-” he said, although those words, foolish and hopeful as they were, were ultimately empty.

Narcissa came with a start, at her own pace.  Her eyes cold. 

“It’s an emergency, can’t you move any faster!” he snarled at her as she came to the doorway.

“It was most imprudent of you to shout like that-” she said through gritted teeth.  “Your father-”

“I don’t care,” said Draco, his eyes and attention entirely focused on Harry.  “Just help me!”

She came to their side, her wand drawn.  Again, there was the blue light that she emitted from her wand.  “His body is giving way,” she said, not bothering to whisper.

“No, it’s not!” Draco answered fervently.  “It’s just-”

“I can fix it,” she said quietly.  “But it’s just temporary.”

“Don’t listen to her Harry,” said Draco, grabbing the other boy’s hand.  “She doesn’t understand.  You’re alright, none of this is temporary.”

Harry’s one green eyes was fixed on him.  It was neither sad nor sacred, but there was something else there, some anxiety.  And for the first time Draco realized that Harry was not scared of dying, he was scared of leaving him alone again.  Draco squeezed his eyes tight; he was not going to cry; he was not going to cry in front of her.  “Fix him,” he said, grinding his teeth together. 

She performed a spell he did not know, in the silent manner that she had, saying nothing, her face hiding any thought that she might have had.  “How does it feel now?” she asked Harry when the blue light had gone. 

He moved his legs.  “I can move it.”

“He should stay in the room,” she whispered.  “He’s too weak to be outside.”

“We were just grabbing some books.”

“He should stay in bed.”

Draco ignored her.  “Does anything hurt?”

“No, I can’t feel-” his sentence was interrupted when he coughed again, a new splatter of blood coming out of his mouth. 

Narcissa wrinkled her nose in distaste.  “Draco-” she began but he was not about to let her finish. 

“You have to teach me that spell.  Then I won’t have to shout for you,” he said.  When she tried to open her mouth again, he continued: “I don’t need your advice and I don’t want your opinion.”  He stared down at Harry.  “Do you think you can walk now?”

He nodded his head. 

Draco helped him up, and then, propping his arm around the other’s waist, he carefully guided him out of the room.  For a moment he thought of the stack of books they had carefully selected together, and now left abandoned over the floor.  “I don’t think she means anything by it,” said Harry.  “She just-”

“I know,” said Draco, more sharply than he intended to.  “But the thing is that I’m going to figure this out.  We’re gonna figure this out,” he leaned closer to him and kissed his cheek.  “You’re gonna get better again, we’ll try more things, I’ll steal that fucking book again if I have to.”

Harry said nothing. 

-

That evening neither one of them could manage any food.  Instead they lay together, Harry’s head on Draco’s shoulder.

“We’re gonna get more Dittany, we can go through a vial a day if that will help.  And I told Diri to get some mandrake juice too, maybe that will help-”

“Okay.”

Draco ran his fingers through Harry’s black hair.  “Are you?  Okay, I mean?”

“Yeah…”

“But?”

He moved a little closer, his head right over Draco’s heart.  “Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, in a tone that was quick and automatic, and a lie. 

“You didn’t eat.”

“You didn’t either.”

Harry was quiet.  “I don’t have to, you know?”

“What?”

“I don’t have to eat.  You do.”

“Since when did you know that?”

Harry didn’t answer.  “My body is different now.  I don’t need glasses either, and-” he lifted up his hand and Draco saw that three of his fingers had gone black at the tips again.  “It’s happening more.”

“It’ll stop once we have more Dittany,” said Draco.  But Harry was right.  It was now happening almost everyday.  He summoned the Dittany from across the room and filled the usual bowl, soaking Harry’s fingers in the liquid. 

“Thank you,” Harry muttered.

Draco had no idea why, but it was those two words that broke the dam, and suddenly, violently, he was sobbing, gripping onto Harry with all the strength in him.  Putting his head on the other’s boy’s shoulder.  He wanted to say so many things then.  He wanted to say how much he loved him, and how he was not, under any circumstance, going to let him slip away.  That he would not watch him die again.  That they would have more snowy days, more baths, more sunrises.  That they would have decades and decades of time.  But his throat ached and his words were incomprehensible between his sobs.

Chapter 6

Lucius Malfoy had known that something was wrong with his son for a long time – years, in fact. 

Draco had always been a sensitive boy.  And circumstances had made him grow up too fast, taking on too many responsibilities.  Lucius was not blind to this.   He could even accept that some of that had been caused by his own actions.  But in the end, everything had worked out perfectly – they had won on all counts.  They were back in the Dark Lord’s favor, and yet, the more victories he piled up, the more miserable Draco looked. 

It was all incomprehensible to him.

These days Draco crept around the house like a mouse.  He had no occupation, no friends, no girlfriend. Nothing a normal boy would want.  His life was contained, and he looked increasingly sickly. 

“He has to get out of the house,” he told Narcissa one day over breakfast, when Draco failed to show up again. 

“He’s resting.”

“Resting? It’s been weeks.”

“He was at dinner yesterday,” she pointed out.

“And hardly said a thing – it’s not natural,” he said, probing his fork hard into the quiche in front of him. “Even his room smells like death.  I really think there is something wrong with him.”

She was pensive, her eyes unreadable as ever.  “He shall be very well soon.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Is he sick?”

“No, just in poor spirits-” she pointed to the window.  “It’s winter, it doesn’t agree with him.  He will be quite alright by summer.  I believe he will even rejoin the Dark Lord’s service.  There is no need to worry.”

For some reason it felt like they had had this conversation before. He couldn’t place it exactly, but it all felt too familiar, even down to the way she reached her hand forward to touch his sleeve.  It felt like a play that had been rehearsed time and time again. 

Lucius frowned.  Maybe there was something wrong with him too. 

-

Sometimes, he really thought he was losing his head.

They would be lying in bed together, the sun barely rising, and then next moment he would be at the dinner table, listening to her talk about Rockwood’s new wife.  His days were all mixed up, and time itself was behaving strangely, as if it had all gotten moved around.  Sometimes, one morning led to another morning, while other days he felt like he had been asleep for weeks. 

Whenever he tried to explain this to her, Narcissa would cock her head to the side and smile as if what he was saying was of no concern, as if he was talking about the weather.  “Has anything strange been happening here?” he asked her once. 

He remembered the question and the look in her eyes as he said it, but for some reason he had no idea what she had answered.  It was just gone. 

“Did I take a spell during the Battle?” he asked another day as they sat at the dinner table, Draco conspicuously absent again. 

She stroked his hair with her soft fingers.  “Yes, darling, you go hurt protecting me.”  She leaned down to kiss his mouth, her taste familiar and divine. 

-

His dreams were growing even stranger than his waking hours.  He dreamt of doors left half opened, revealing bits flickering images peeking out like warped photographs.  He dreamt of Harry Potter, sitting in his library, with one eye and Draco’s pajamas.  He dreamt of his son, with shoulder length hair, covered in blood and shouting at Narcissa.  He dreamt of boys’ laughter.  He dreamt of mice who came to fill the bed with secrets that itched and poked at his skin like a locust.  He dreamt with discomfort.  With danger.  With Harry Potter, living and dead, waking through his house, and buried in the Malfoy family plot, mingled with the bones of his father.

He dreamt in red.  Blood splotches on his hallways.  Portraits empty in their frames. Voices that called out to him: “Nasty situation you let happen, Lucius.”

“That’s what becomes of things when you leave a Black in charge.”

He would wake up in sweats, clinging to Narcissa by his side, touching and possessing her to ease himself, but it was never enough, never enough.  Everything was getting so confused. 

Sometimes he was not even sure when he was dreaming and when he was awake.

Multiple truths existed for him, simultaneously, in an incomprehensible patchwork of memories, dreams, and thoughts, which he had lost the ability to distinguish from each other.

-

It was only a matter of time.  It was only a matter of time. 

One day he made the mistake of looking into the Dark Lord’s eyes.

They were in a meeting together, and he sat as far away from him as politeness would dictate.  He had stayed quiet all meeting long, in his beautiful new indigo robes, the trimmings golden in the firelight. He had just been admiring the sleeves when the Dark Lord asked him a question. 

What was he to do but look into those cursed eyes? Into the blood red pupils?  Into the skull like face?  At first, Lucius sensed nothing, and then, it was as if his whole mind was being stormed.  Doors burst open.  And everything he had ever hidden laid out bare. 

He had never felt so weak .   

-

It did not surprise Narcissa that her husband returned with an entourage or that the Dark Lord had a wand to his throat.  It didn’t even surprise her that there were seven other Death Eaters surrounding him, their faces hidden behind bone masks.  Oh, no, this was not surprising.  She had warned Draco time and again to be more discrete, to be more cautious, to build a better façade behind which they could all hide. 

But he hadn’t.  Being with that Potter boy – rotting and sickly as he was – had been more important to him than his own family. He hadn’t even made an appearance at their dinner table.  He had not even spared a moment for the father who loved him so.  It was disappointing.  She expected loyalty within her family. As she had been loyal to him. 

She had done everything in her power to keep Potter alive. She had brought him all the obscure ingredients he needed.  She had even gone so far as to modify Lucius’s memory, not once, but many, many times.  And this, of course, had muddled him, confused all his senses. 

From the window of her bedroom she watched the Death Eaters enter her home.  She knew exactly what it meant.  Life as she knew it was over.  They would be despised.  Tortured.  Killed.  They were now the enemy, just as Potter had been.  And no sweet talking, no sickly compliments, could save her. 

When they entered the room she was in, she did not even put up a fight.  She dropped her wand to the floor and raised her hands over her head.  This was unfamiliar to her – she had never surrendered before.

-

Draco knew there was something wrong mere seconds before the door burst opened.  There were too many voices.  Too many footsteps.  He had just enough time to make a grab for his wand when three of them entered and all at once it was zooming out of his hand and into one of theirs’. 

He remembered shouting something at Harry, something foolish that didn’t sound like him at all.  Maybe he told him to run.  Or maybe he told him to grab the invisibility cloak and vanish.  He really meant those words as he said them, but that was only because he did not fully understand the situation. 

Without a struggle, both boys, malnourished and sick, were pulled from the room. Draco kicking and screaming like a child, Harry limp as a dead body, his one green eye staring at the ceiling.

“Let him go! Let him go!” Draco screamed, thrashing against them as they were dragged down the hallway. 

Someone kneed him hard in the jaw, and he blinked back, the impact blurring his vision. 

This was not what was supposed to happen.  He had struggled for months and months to bring Harry back and this most certainly was not how things were supposed to go.  They were supposed to have a happy ending.  Without sickness, without Voldemort, without death.  It was supposed to be just them.  

He tried to look at Harry, but he couldn’t turn his head the right way. The only thing he could see was the wall next to him, and his ancestors in their old fashioned robes chasing after them from portrait to portrait, ever hungry for blood. 

The hallway felt eternal and each time they went through another doorway his head was unceremoniously banged against the wall, until it was ringing.

Draco could tell by the heavy chandelier above them that they were being brought into the dinning room.  Whoever was dragging him pulled him up by his shoulders, bringing him to his feet.  Draco tried to get away from their grip but Selwyn was large, and his muscular arms went around him easily, pressing in on him like a snake. 

Voldemort was in the center of the room, Lucius kneeling on the floor by his feet.  Against one of the walls stood Narcissa, a Death Eater to either side of her.  Her hands and feet were apparently bound by magic.  There were another four Death Eaters surrounding Harry, who was still being pinned to the floor. 

Draco struggled against Selwyn. He wanted to rush to Harry, to help him somehow.  He looked so small like that, so vulnerable, the four black figures towering over him. There was already blood dribbling out of his mouth.

“Draco-” Voldemort’s voice brought a shiver down his spine, and his eyes inadvertently moved to him.  “It appears you did not tell me everything about your little trip-”  the last words were spoken with hatred, his lips pressed together into a tight line. 

Draco did not know what to say.  He had never planned for this contingency.  What was he supposed to do? Get on his knees and beg? Explain? Die standing firm with his chest squared, like Harry had?  “My- my- Lord-”  those were the first words which came out. 

Voldemort laughed.  “Is that still what you call me Draco? I am surprised.”

“My Lord.  Of course, that is what I call you,” his voice trembled, the tone rising and falling unnaturally.  “I am your devoted servant.”

“Devoted?” Voldemort laughed again, and this time the Death Eaters joined him.  “Devoted enough to bring my greatest adversary back from the dead?”

“I didn’t-” Draco looked back at Harry, meeting the single green eye.  His voice faltered and he couldn’t pick up what he had started.

“Were you going to deny it?”

From where he lay on the floor, Harry shook his head. 

“No, my Lord, I-”

“You call me my Lord, but it is him you look to.”

“I-”

“My Lord-” this time it was Narcissa’s voice that cut through the room.  “My son did wrong, but not for the reasons that you think.  He did not bring Potter back because he is your adversary, he brought him back because – because he is infatuated with the boy.”

There was laughter again and Draco hung his head.  She was trying to save him, he could appreciate that, but the words still stung.  Was there anything she could say to get them out of this situation?  Had she planned for this contingency?  Was she prepared for it?

“Is that true Draco?”

His head was pounding, and he was covered in cold sweat.  This was a nightmare.  “I-” he croaked the word.  He would never be able to admit it, not in front of all these men. 

He felt Voldemort move across the room, his long grey robes swishing over the floor.  “Bring him to his feet,” he ordered, and Draco watched as they raised Harry.  There were two people behind him, pinning his arms down, and another had a hand on his neck, forcing him to look straight up at the Dark Lord.  “What do you say, Potter?”

Harry coughed blood.  “I am not really back from the dead, Tom,” he smiled, all his teeth stained red.

An almost academic curiosity took over Voldemort as he surveyed Harry closely.  “It didn’t work properly, I take it.”

“It did not.  No one can cheat death, remember?”

“On that point we disagree,” said Voldemort.  He took a step back, his eyes moving up and down Harry’s body and then turning to Draco again.  “Have you come up with an answer?”

Before he could try to reply, Voldemort raised his wand.  Draco didn’t have any time to gather himself.  A second later he was in the worst pain of his life. Everything he had met with previously was nothing. Sectum Sempra was nothing.  Slicing his fingers off was nothing.  This was pain with a sharpness that he did not know. It cleared his head.  It made thought impossible.  The only thing he knew was his body burned.  That the sensation was hot, sharp, and covering every inch of his skin, as if he had simultaneously been stabbed by a thousand knives. He writhed in pain. 

Voldemort was speaking again, but the words sounded as if they were spoken underwater.  Every one of them unintelligible.  He felt the arms around him let him go and he fell forward, the pain increasing at the sudden and harsh contact with the floor. 

A second later the spell was lifted, and he found himself in the middle of a scream that filled the room.  His body shivering and convulsing, the pain still lingering, just under the skin. 

“Your answer, Draco. You shouldn’t keep people waiting, it’s very rude.”

He couldn’t remember the question.  What had the question been? He stared at the floor in front of him in panic and, somehow, found his father’s eyes.  He was on the floor too, on his hands and knees.  His expression dazed; his hair messy.  And all at once Draco thought he was going to be sick.  They were mirror images of each other, lost and pitiful. 

Again, he was not given the time to answer, instead another spell pulled him forward, bringing him forcefully to his feet as it did so.  He was pulled, almost magnetically, towards Voldemort.  His arms pinned to his side, unable to move. 

Voldemort put a cold hand at his throat, twisting his head up so that their eyes met.  And suddenly Draco was not alone in his head anymore. The Dark Lord had slithered in when all his defences were down.  When he was in pain.  When fear was making him irrational. When the age old dread of becoming his father had surfaced with terrifying truth once again.   

“Infatuated-” the word rang through the room.  “How very interesting.  To do so much for only such a petty reward.”

Not for the first time Draco was brought back to something Narcissa had told him as a boy: How can you expect mudbloods, and half-bloods, to understand how we love?  To understand that when we love nothing could stand between us, not even death? They do not feel things like we do. He closed his eyes.  Whatever was about to happen, he did not regret his actions.  The Dark Lord could rip him to pieces, but he would never regret those extra weeks he had procured for himself and for Harry.

“My son-” Narcissa’s voice brought him back to the room.  “Is a very foolish boy.  But now that you have seen into his heart you know that his motives were not political, they were personal.”

The Dark Lord released him, and Draco tumbled to the floor again, like a rag doll.  “Your son’s motives were indeed very personal.  How would you describe your own, Narcissa?”

“I am mother,” she spoke the words firmly, as if she were simply stating her title. 

The Dark Lord scoffed.  “Mothers are very troublesome creatures, are they not, Potter?”

Harry began to say something but just as he opened his mouth the Dark Lord raised his wand.  He spoke no words but instinctively Draco knew was happening to him and flinched at the thought of that pain again.  In contrast to him, Harry did not scream, he did not convulse, his body stayed just the same, and for the first time Draco was grateful that he could not feel anything. 

When the spell lifted there was no change in Harry, either in his posture or expression and, as Draco looked at Voldemort, he thought he saw a flicker in fear in the red of his eyes.  “Impervious as ever I see.  We shall simply have to do a better job of cutting you up.  What do you say, boys?”

The Death Eaters roared and hooted, like children eager to beat a piñata. 

He raised his wand again and Draco shut his eyes. 

He did not want to see this.  He could not stand to see it.  Not again.  There was a horrible gut churning noise of flesh being hit and then he put his arms over his head.  He wanted to tune it all out.  To be elsewhere.  But where?  Where would he possibly go? Even if he could get away, what would be the point if he and Harry were not together. 

There was gleeful shouting in the room, and somebody was laughing (at him, presumably).  He must look ridiculous, on his knees, his eyes shut and his arms over his head.  Like a little boy scared during a thunderstorm. 

There was a loud bang and then someone levitated him.  He opened his eyes to see himself four or five feet from the floor, his hands forced to his sides, his legs stretched down.  A Death Eater he did not recognize had his wand raised towards him, and, on the ground, Harry lay on his back.  His face looked like it had been mauled, deep cuts zig zagging through the skin and heavy red swelling around the mouth.  There was blood over his good eye and he had it closed, as Voldemort hit him with another spell that slashed deeply from his left ear all the way down to his right collarbone, wetting Draco’s old pajamas with blood. 

“I know you are no Gryffindor, Draco, but really I think it would do you good to see this-” with a flick of his wand another spell made a gash across Harry’s face.  Draco tried to shut his eyes the next moment but found that he couldn’t.  He was frozen, perfectly frozen. 

“See, I knew you would agree with me.” Voldemort made another slash this time across both cheeks.  Harry’s entire face was growing swollen, blood coming out of so many places that the color of his skin looked red.  The Dark Lord took a step back, admiring his work, and then turned his head towards Narcissa: “What do you think? Shall we make the lovebirds match?”

 She was paler than Draco had ever seen her, but even under this pressure and this fear, her eyes said nothing: “It is a mother’s place to protect her children and it is a Lord’s place to punish those who have displeased him.”

The Dark Lord laughed.  “How diplomatic.” Careless, he flicked his wand and more blood came out Harry.

“What about you, Lucius? Do you have anything to say about your son?”

His father was still on the floor, and when the Dark Lord addressed him, he gave a whimper. 

“Nothing to say?’

A sound emerged, cracked and infantile, but it was no word.   

“I suppose that is to be expected, your wife and son did quite a number on you, didn’t they?” Abruptly the Dark Lord pointed his wand at Luscius, and Draco tried (and failed) to shut his eyes again.  His father screamed, the sound echoing over the room, cascading into his very heart.  His body twitched, his head jerking, unable to handle the sensation. Just like me , thought Draco with another horrible pang.  “Of course, I suppose I may have overdone myself,” the Dark Lord mused.  “You were never strong, maybe I have performed one cruciatus too many.”

There was a small sound, somewhere between a gasp and moan and  Draco shifted his eyes to see Narcissa. 

“Are you still feeling diplomatic, Narcissa? Or you do have something to say to me?”

“I have much to say, my Lord,” her voice was steady and smooth, as if she were addressing a dinner party and not presiding over the probable death of her entire family.  “We have made many mistakes.  Draco was mistaken in bringing that boy back, and I was mistaken in letting him keep such a creature in our home-” her tone and eyes sharpened, a tinge of anger present in both.  “It was nothing against you, my Lord, we are devoted servants.”  Draco knew her enough to be  sure that if she were not bound, she would be bowing to the ground but instead she merely lowered her eyes, staring at where the Dark Lord’s robes dragged on the floor.  “Our mistakes have not been of faith; they have been of love.  And it is for that which we should be punished.  We have never, for one moment, wavered from our devotion to you.”

For the first time a spell shot across the room, knocking her back against the wall.  “I must say,” said Voldemort. “You keep your composure well.  You keep your secrets well.  The same cannot be said for Lucius, or-“ his eyes rose to look at Draco.  “For your son.  I have seen into their minds, Narcissa.  I have seen what they think, what they feel, how they see me.” He paused.  “You say they are devoted, but I saw none of that – all I saw was apprehension and fear.”

At these words, another surge of anger seemed to ignite within the Dark Lord and he crucioed Lucius again.  The second scream was wild, animalistic, more like a howl than any human noise Draco had ever heard.  Lucius flopped onto his back, each of his limbs moving disjointedly, pure, clear sobs rocking his body.  And Draco would feel that same pain again, so very soon, and looking at Lucius felt just like staring into a mirror.

“We fear your greatness!” exclaimed Narcissa, over the animal noises coming out of her husband’s mouth.  “We fear your power.  As do all, Death Eater or not.”

This seemed to please him for he lifted the spell.  It made no difference however; Lucius remained sprawled on his back, sobbing and screaming, inconsolable. 

“Flattery, that is what you offer me? Empty words.”

“We are at your mercy, my Lord.  We offer anything you wish to take.”

Voldemort seemed to consider this for a moment.  “The question is: is there anything I need from you?” His eyes went from her, to Lucius crying on the floor, to Draco, suspended above.  “I do not believe so.”  He gave Lucius a kick.  “Your husband is empty now.  Your son is weak.  And however attractive you may be to other men, you do not tempt me.”

Narcissa did not seem to have a retort to this, for she remained silent, and the Dark Lord switched his attention back to Harry.  “What do you have to say on the matter?”

Harry opened his mouth and a gurgle of blood came out. 

“That is of no help at all-”  he turned his attention to the Death Eaters behind Harry.  “Anybody care to voice an opinion?”

The room was deathly quiet. 

“You have no friends here, it would seem.”

There was another moment of quiet, where the only sounds Draco could hear was the pounding of his heart and his father’s feeble crying.  And then the Dark Lord made a large, sturdy chair appear out of thin air.  He sat back on, surveying the scene – the four of them all wounded, the seven Death Eaters ready to pounce.  “Let us start with Potter-” he said quietly.  “We’ll decide the rest later.” He turned his head to look at the four who surrounded Harry.  “Well then?”

And then it began again, with a sickening familiarity.  There was nothing Draco could do.  He could not shield his eyes, he could not cover his ears, the best he could manage was averting his gaze, staring at the corner of the room rather than at Harry.  But this only felt worse – somehow more disrespectful, as if he were denying him support, denying him pity. 

When he turned his eyes back, Harry was being levitated between the four men, so still he looked dead.  Somebody had cursed his jaw so that it hung unnaturally open and was knocking out each of his teeth with what looked like the back of a knife.  Another was making flickering black flames come out of his wand and using them to trail burns down Harry’s leg, destroying his clothes as well as the skin underneath.   

Draco tried again to lurch forward, trying to fight against the constraints that held him in place.  But the only bit of his body he was capable of moving at all were his eyes.  One of the Death Eaters shouted crucio, and the memory of the pain was enough to make him want to cry. 

It was only in that moment that he really realized that this would be the end for them. 

The person below – that person whom he loved so much, whom he would do anything for – was really no longer a person.  He had reverted back to a corpse, withdrawn from his physical body. And although there was no way to speak to him, Draco knew that Harry was away, that he had entered his dreams again.  That he was imagining that quiet, empty world of death. 

And that was the best that Draco could hope for him. That he did not feel the torment and trauma that his body was being subjected to.  But Draco felt it.  He felt every stab and every curse.  He felt a revolting anguish when they began, again, to physically pull him apart.  To rip out fingers by magic, suspending them in the air like darts and then shooting them at Draco as they laughed.  Breaking all the bones of his feet with one of Lucius walking canes, the sound a disgusting symphony.  He watched as the Death Eaters grew more and more violent, eager to outdo each other, eager to show their master how little value they placed on life. 

Draco watched them gash Harry’s face, over and over again, with increasing frenzy, the blood spilling and turning his face into an unrecognizable horror. Now, it wasn’t only that it didn’t look like Harry, it was that it did not even look human anymore.  He watched them flail the skin from his arms, with spells that he had never even heard of before. He watched them cut off both of his ears and then make them dance above his head as they jeered. 

And still the green eye would move, and still the chest would rise and fall, and Draco knew that the thing in there, the thing that he had resurrected, was still with him, in this room, living his worst nightmare.

After taking his ears, one of the Death Eaters stabbed his eye with the tip of his knife, emitting a gushing sound.  He twisted the knife hard into the socket and when he pulled it out, the eyeball came with it.  That earned him a congratulatory whoop from the Death Eater next to him.

Up above, immobile, his eyes watering from having remained unblinking for so long, Draco felt some finality in that gesture.  As if that eye was the symbol of Harry’s humanity, or Harry’s continued existence in the world of the living.  And now it was gone, stabbed and taken, and the thing below (whether it was breathing or not) was really not a person at all.

He turned his eyes away, focusing on an empty spot of wallpaper.   

Sounds raged on below him.  The sounds of a body being torn to pieces. The sounds of his father crying.  The sounds of the Dark Lord’s occasional commands, of the Death Eater’s shouts and insults.  And to think these were the last words that the Great Harry Potter would ever hear. 

There was a lump of regret within him.  Why hadn’t he tried to say something? Try to reassure him?  Why hadn’t he said anything when they were being dragged away? Why hadn't he told him how much he loved him, or how sorry he was that all this had happened?

Once upon a time, Draco had really believed in fairy tales, in happy endings, in love ever after.  He had been foolish and small, but some idea of that must have lingered and stayed with him well into the present – until this very moment, in fact – he had really believed that they could be happy, that they could have everything.  Oh, how stupid he had been.  How selfish.  How cruel.  To bring Harry back to this world where nothing good ever happened.  To bring him back to a world where he did not even belong, to bring him back to be sick, to be numb, to be discovered and tortured and made to suffer. 

What had he been thinking? How had he let this happen?

His stomach churned.  He wanted to be sick.  He wanted to crawl into Cepheus’s grave by the sea. To be still and forgotten.  He deserved nothing better and so much worse.  Time lurched on.  Lucius fell silent, curled into a ball, his hair spread over him, his face red from all the sobbing.  

The noises from the Death Eater grew less enthusiastic.  It was clear that there was no life in Harry anymore, and although Draco did not want to look, he imagined that whatever they had left of his body was no more than the bits he himself had buried the time before. 

The new silence felt harsh somehow.  Like the eye of the storm.  And the only thing Draco could wish for was death.  He found himself hungering for that emptiness that Harry had described, because he knew he did not want to feel anything ever again. 

Finally, after an interval that could have been hours, he was lowered to the ground. 

It happened unexpectedly, one moment he could not move and the next he was falling.

The crash was nasty, his limbs turning every which way, his ankle giving an unpleasant crack and then bending, making him fall to the floor on his side.

Grandiose and regal, the Dark Lord slowly rose from his throne.  The room was full of blood and a smell so vile that Draco found himself vomiting all over the carpet.   “Draco-” Narcissa said, her voice breaking.  He could not bear to turn around and look at her. He did not want to see her again.  He did not want to see anything ever again. 

The Dark Lord came right to him and Draco raised his gaze to look at him.  He felt like an insect staring up at God.  And he had no defenses, no will left to shield himself.  Voldemort could have it all, his memories, his thoughts, he did not care for any of it.  All he wanted was death, and those red eyes glowed with that promise.

For a moment they held eye contact and silently Draco begged him, begged him to end it all. 

The wand was raised, and Draco closed his eyes – waiting for that silence, waiting for that other world.

“Avada Kedrava.”

There was a flash of light and he held his breath, a surge of panic mixed with everything else.  He waited a second and then another, before opening his eyes again.  He was still lying just where he had been, vomit all over him, the Dark Lord towering before him.  “What-” he croaked the word out. “What?” Was he somehow immune, had he survived like Harry had survived?

For a moment he really believed it, and then he realized what had happened. 

He turned around to see his mother just where she had been.  Her hands and feet still bound.  Whatever magic had been binding her was also stopping her corpse from falling.  The last expression on her face was anguish.  He could not remember Narcissa joyful, he could not remember Narcissa sad, and seeing her like this, every inch of her face overcome with agony, was like seeing a stranger. 

Draco slowly turned back to the Dark Lord.  He knew that every eye was on him.  “Please,” he begged, although he knew it was no good.  “Please,” he held on to the bottom of Voldemort’s robes with his hands, the good one and the maimed, desperate, absolutely desperate to die. 

“Dumbledore always had this ridiculous notion that love was the greatest power on earth-” began the Dark Lord, in a voice that was almost droll.  “That love could conquer anything, even death-” he chuckled and so did the Death Eaters who followed his lead.  “But look what love has done-” he gestured around the room, to his mother's corpse, standing like a statue, to his father on the floor like an infant, to Harry or the bits that remained of him burned and butchered, and to Draco, clinging to the Dark Lord’s robes, literally begging for death with every bit of strength left in him. 

“But I do think he was right about one thing, you know.  For some people, for weak people, who love , there are worse things than death.” He laughed, and again the Death Eaters joined him.  “Why should I give you what you want, Draco? Why should I offer you the one thing that would give you peace of mind?

“I have seen inside your head.  If I want you to truly pay for what you did, I must have you live.”  He laughed for the third time, shill, and cold, and loud as thunder. 

The idea was so ghastly that Draco could not begin to wrap his head around it.  How could he live after this? How could he exist in any form, settle into any kind of normality? It was impossible.  This had to be the end of his life, there could be no after-

“Selwyn, Mulciber, Nott, Pyrites” said Voldemort, and the Death Eaters came forward. “You are tasked with keeping Draco under 24 surveillance for the remainder of his natural life.  He is never to have a wand again, and he is never to leave this house again.  He and Lucius will live here, and if either of them die-” he gave a nasty smile that said too much.  “Their punishment would be severe.”

There was a chorus of agreements from around him, but Draco did not hear it.  He was full of disbelief.  He did not want it.  He would not do it.  He could not stand it.  To live, alone in this house, with his father, forever.  He vomited again at the very idea, and several of the Death Eaters laughed. 

“Goodbye Draco,” said the Dark Lord, taking a step toward the door, his cloak escaping from between Draco fingers.  “I wish you a long, fulfilling life.”

In that moment Draco would have liked to feel empty.  He had always assumed there was a finite amount of pain a human could take and that after that limit was breached the numbness would come.  But that was not what happened to him.  He felt everything.  Every bit of the sorrow, every bit of the fear; he felt the physical pain of his body, of his broken ankle, of the place where his head had been bumped against the wall hours before.   He felt disgust for his own form, for the vomit drenching his clothes, for Harry’s blood which tainted the whole room.  He felt everything, amplified like music, to the point that it  was so loud it felt as if it would break him, but no break would come, no sweet release.

And in all truth, Draco had no idea how he would bear it.

He curled up into a ball, his knees folded into himself, looking just like his father.  And as he closed his eyes, he saw Harry mutilated, Harry in pain, Harry bleeding and silent, forced to endure hell for him.

The end

Notes:

Thank you to anyone who made it to end of this very bloody tale

Notes:

Remember to leave some love for the creator if you can! Come reblog this work and view others from this fest HERE on the H/D Hurt!Fest tumblr page!