Part II of II: Salvation & Sacrament
Salvation&Sacrament
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- -
Harry steps to the side and allows Malfoy to enter first. He closes the door behind them both and looks at Malfoy, who is not looking at him.
“So this is it,” he says, coming around Malfoy, holding his arms out.
Harry is proud of his flat. It is simple and spacious while not being too overbearing, with hardwood floors, clean lines, muted colors. It is comfortable but stylish. Anybody would have loved it.
“What do you think?” he asks, regretting the words the moment they leave his mouth. He braces himself for the worst.
But Malfoy surprises him when he says, simply, “It’s nice.”
Harry falters. “Thank you,” he says, after a beat.
He gives Malfoy the tour, which is much shorter, he had tried to joke, than what he assumes a grand tour at Malfoy Manor would be like. But this elicits nothing from Malfoy, who seems to still be locked away in Azkaban for all the emotion that Harry is able to get out him.
Harry shows Malfoy to a room at the end of the hallway.
“This’ll be your room,” he says as he opens the door for both of them.
Malfoy looks around briefly before he takes a seat on the edge of the bed, and Harry suddenly feels like an intruder in his own home, which he finds an unwelcome feeling, this being his home after all; this being his room. He is torn between asserting himself before Malfoy and reminding him that he’s here, in Harry’s guest bedroom, sitting on Harry’s Egyptian cotton bedspread instead of Azkaban because of Harry, because Harry saved him- and the shameful expression in Malfoy’s eyes that begs him not to and tells him that he already knows far better than Harry ever could.
He sighs. And Harry isn’t sure why he does it, the maybes and possibilities as endless as they are, but he chooses to give Malfoy that small reminder as he walks out and closes the door behind him.
“Five years, then.”
And the click of the door as it closes sounds to Harry like an ending, like a metal-snapping conclusion or death, but Harry knows that this is only the beginning.
- -
They arrive in Niger seven days after leaving Guinea, and the first thing Harry notices is that most of the airport employees are white, with English or French accents, and almost all of them are sunburned. The woman who helps them at the hire car desk is short and blonde, with dark eyebrows and a double chin. She tells Harry that the company has given his car away by accident and that there is nothing they can do about it and that they are terribly sorry, but won’t he please step aside so that the next in line may be helped?
Harry wants to leave before he has even stepped outside of the airport. Already he doesn’t like it here.
“Look, it’s not that big of a deal,” Draco says as he tries to comfort him. “We’ll just pay someone to drive us around. That way we’ll have a car and get rid of some money. It’s win-win, really.”
Harry feels wary about this place. He is seriously considering walking back into the airport and getting on the next departing plane that will take them somewhere else, some other African city where the people needed him just as much.
“Draco, I’m not sure-”
“Look, there’s one now,” Draco offers. “He looks trustworthy.” He points across the street to a gas station, where a native young man in an amber Florida tourist t-shirt is leaning against an old lorry that might have been white once, but most of the paint was eroded off. Draco quickly checks the traffic and crosses the street, calling behind him, “The sooner we get rid of the money, the sooner we can leave.”
By the time Harry catches up with him, Draco is already in the midst of negotiating in his own language of African-English with the man, who is really closer in age to a boy, possibly no more than seventeen or eighteen.
“You is driving us to out of city in car, yes?” Draco says, his voice rather loud, his huge smile painfully fake. He is leaning in close to the boy, as if that will help him understand.
“Yes, yes,” the boy answers, “I is driving for you.”
He seems overjoyed by this proposition. He holds his hands together in front of his chest like a small child asking for candy and smiles broadly, which makes his ears stick out awkwardly. There is a dusting of black freckles on the tip of his nose and cheeks, and his skin looks clean and smooth. He glances at Harry, and his good humor seems so genuine that Harry finds himself smiling back.
“To places where the poor is living?” Draco asks loudly.
There are other people at this gas station, tourists, Harry estimates, if their rucksacks and visors are anything to go by. They look at Draco oddly.
The boy appears confused. “Pour?” he asks.
Draco looks to be considering this. “No money,” he says after some thought. “To where they is having no money and is living bad.”
That much the boy understands, and he nods his head emphatically. “Yes, they is being very poor there.”
“What is they calling you?” Harry asks, before he can rearrange the words in his head. Draco smirks at him.
The boy’s smile widens, which Harry hadn’t thought would be possible.
“They is calling me Yerodin,” he says.
“Yerodin,” Draco says, “we go now?”
Yerodin smiles and brings the keys to the lorry out of his pocket. He is all smiles and big ears as he climbs into the driver seat and starts the engine. Harry and Draco sit in the far back, in the flatbed, which is surprisingly clean for being so old, and easily large enough to fit two or three more back there, and they sit on almost opposite sides.
Niger is pure, red-golden Sahara desert. The ground is a deep, thick carpet of sand, and the air is hot and dry like nothing Harry has ever felt before. He imagines that this is what the surface of the sun would be like, and the landscape is amber-orange stained and rolling sand dunes for as far as the eye can see. The sky is a clear expanse of white-white-blue from one horizon to the next.
The wind is hot, and it burns Harry’s cheeks and lips and dries his throat, and he has never wanted a drink of water so badly before in all of his life. He thinks his throat might be covered in sand, because it’s everywhere else, in his eyes and hair and mouth and just everywhere.
Draco’s hand suddenly comes down clumsily on top of his, and Harry turns to look at him through squinted eyes.
He says something that Harry can’t make out. The wind and sand steal the words away before they can reach his ears.
“What?” Harry yells.
“I want to go home!” Draco repeats.
Harry nods in agreement and takes Draco’s hand in his despite the fact that they’re hands are like sandpaper, dried and coarse, and the friction between the two is uncomfortable and abrasive. Harry would have withstood it and held on forever if Draco had wanted him to.
The lorry begins to slow, and finally Harry can open his eyes without the immediate threat of flying sand to his vision. Draco pulls his hand away and turns round, towards the approaching destination. There is a village just ahead, which is bigger than Harry had expected, than he has so far experienced, with more shacks than he can automatically count, and he has to estimate how many there might be; anywhere from 25 to 35, he guesses. A sinking feeling comes over him inexplicably as the lorry rolls closer.
Draco bangs on the rear window and tells to Yerodin to stop, and Harry suddenly feels right again, because he thinks that Draco is going to tell him to turn around. He thinks Draco is going to demand that he return them to the airport, and they will purchase tickets to Nigeria or Zimbabwe or wherever, and finally leave this place and its hot air and sodding sand behind.
But instead Draco turns to him and says, “This is all yours, Harry.” He climbs out of the flatbed and gets into the passenger seat beside Yerodin. His door bangs shut, a loud and rusted clack, and Harry feels all of his hopes fall to the desert floor.
The lorry begins to roll forward, and they’re almost there, and the people are starting to notice them, are beginning to move towards the vehicle. Harry gets slowly to his feet, touching his pockets to make sure the money is ready, and he tells himself that this won’t be so bad, that he’ll just hand out the money as they pass through, and there are plenty of people so he’ll be sure to get rid of it all in one day, and then he and Draco can be on a plane by tomorrow morning, or tonight if there were any available.
They are only about fifty meters out at this point, and some of the natives have started running towards the pickup. The first to get there is a boy, no older than 10 or 11, who walks along side the lorry as it keeps moving, dressed in a tank top and khakis that are about five sizes too big, held up only by a piece a rope through the belt loops. He holds his hand out to Harry and says something in a language Harry that doesn’t know, but he understands the desperation in his voice, can see it in the boy’s huge almond-shaped eyes, and Harry gives him the entirety of the first lump of cash. The relief in his eyes is almost enough for Harry to drown in.
But then another boy, this one older, sixteen perhaps, grabs Harry’s forearm and says something to him with narrowed eyes that sounds like it might be an accusation, motioning to Harry’s shirt pocket, from which he had just removed the money. Harry looks at him coldly and tries to snatch his arm away, but the boy has a good grip, and he’s strong, stronger than Harry remembers he or Ron being at that age. Harry tries again, pulling as hard as he dares while trying to avoid a dislocated shoulder, but the boy’s grasp on his arm holds hard, and suddenly Harry feels that he is the one being pulled, being yanked down, and this boy has eyes are that black and cruel. Harry stumbles and almost pitches forward and suddenly becomes very aware of the exact distance between himself and the ground, when his survival instincts kick in and he slams down to his knees on the flatbed to give himself more leverage, and it’s down to a game of tug and war between himself and this boy, this sixteen-year-old who is looking at Harry like he is the one personally responsible for all of this, from the scar across his cheek to the dirty, tattered shirt on his back to the sand in the desert and the heat of the sun and the holy injustice of it all.
They struggle for a moment more before Harry gives one final yank and falls backwards, banging his head against the tire well. His vision swims briefly in darkness before clearing, and he sits up slowly, rubbing the back of his head, thinking that that will smart later. A hand reaches for him from behind, clasping onto his collar briefly before falling away and wrenching at his shoulders. Harry turns his head and sees that they have reached the interior of the village, and what seems to be every single inhabitant has come out to swarm their lorry and beg for money. There has to be over fifty of them, Harry guesses, four or five deep on all sides of the flatbed, and they reach for him and grasp at whatever they can, as if their hands themselves are hungry for Harry’s skin, his shirt, his hair, and he has to move to the middle of the flatbed so that they can’t touch him. And then he stands up, to put more distance between himself and the people.
They look at him like he might be the Second Coming or the prime minister or the president or whoever answers to their problems; whoever IS their answer. They hold their hands out to him, palms up and open, the sleeves of their faded and threadbare t-shirts riding up, so loose that Harry can see their ribs protruding from the skin on their sides. They are calling him, screaming at him from all sides, telling their stories to him in languages he never thought existed as they crowd the flatbed, chests to sun-eroded paint and metal, and he feels suffocated by their need, swallowed whole by it.
Their eyes are wide and shockingly white against their black skin. Their voices break as they cry out to him. Their teeth are perfect.
And it’s wrong, Harry suddenly realizes, it isn’t right, the way they look at him, the people here. Desperate and hungry and seeming to say Save me, save me, isn’t that what you’re here for? as they grasp at the ends of his cream linen shirt, which Draco had insisted he buy at the airport gift shop to keep cool, and even though it was painfully expensive, he did, yes, he bought it just to see the smile on Draco’s face when Harry wore it the next day, and the people’s hands are so dark and so dry that Harry becomes suddenly so thirsty he thinks he might die of it, might crumble to pieces right then and there, as stone and sand. And this isn’t just the wrong place or the wrong time, it’s the wrong idea, the wrong bloody notion.
Who was he to think he could save these people, even a few, two or three or four?
Who was he to think he could save anybody?
Harry yells to Yerodin not to stop, to drive until they are far from here, and he avoids Draco’s eyes when he looks back at him from the passenger seat. Harry takes a seat at the far end of the flatbed, his back to the tailgate, and the reflection in the lorry’s rear glass window is of the Nigerans running after them, arms extended, and of himself, in his linen shirt, crisp and clean, the unassuming color of sand, as he does nothing.
- -
The skies here are a thicker gray than Harry remembers ever seeing before, having become accustomed to England’s rain clouds, white-gray and high up as they were, so high up that they seemed far beyond any matter that would have to do with Harry, or with anyone else. The sky over England, and over the rest of the world, it was untouchable, indifferent to everything that happened below.
But it was different here, as everything seemed different. The clouds in Africa hang low, close to the ground, so close that Harry thinks he can feel them brushing the top of his head and wetting the palms of his hands. And they are deeper here: darker, fuller, and the thunder makes the ground shake and rumbles of something other than a mere scientific reaction to lightning.
Harry thinks that this is perhaps why Africa has remained so untouched, so sacred still, this closeness.
- -
Harry has this dream later that night:
He is standing on the same cliff in Guinea they had been before, and he can hear the rain as it beats on the leaves of the trees and falls on the ground, but he is dry and there isn’t a drop coming from the dark clouds over his head, and he doesn’t think that this is odd, that this is out of the ordinary in the least. He peers over the edge of the cliff and there are thousands of natives clinging to the side of the mountain, their grips slipping as they call out to him, cry for his help in a thousand languages that he doesn’t understand.
He falls back from the brink and stumbles into something, and when he turns he sees Draco standing over him, and he is drenched in the rain that isn’t falling, and there are drops rolling off of his cheeks like tears.
“Don’t push me,” Harry says, and he has to shout because he can barely hear himself over the sound of the non-rain. “Draco, please don’t push me over.”
Draco looks confused. “Push you?”
Harry glances over his shoulder, and it’s such a long way down, such a very, very long way to the bottom. He turns back but Draco has disappeared, and suddenly the rain arrives, pouring over his skin and hair and soaking his clothes, and the sound isn’t that of rain, but of the voices of all the people he hadn’t been able to save, their cries of help and accusations of neglect, echoing with every drop that falls. The ground beneath his feet becomes unsteady and slick with the pouring rain and he slips, and he is falling backwards, falling over the edge, and it is nothing like flying or being free.
It is only falling.
- -
“I know you wanted to save me,” Draco is saying, and Harry wonders if this is a dream, if this has perhaps never really happened, because nothing exists except for them, no time or place or detail.
There is only Draco, and the way his hands tremble when he holds Harry’s hand so tightly he thinks the bones will break.
“I know you wanted to save me,” Draco is saying, “But I feel like you’ve killed me instead.”
- -
“We have to leave here,” Harry says. “Go someplace else.”
“What?” Draco asks, turning to look at him.
It is the middle of the day, and they are still in Niger, having lunch at an outdoor café, and the existence of such a thing in such an unbearably hot place baffles Harry, makes his head spin, or maybe that is the heat.
He sets his drink on the white tablecloth and leans forward. “Africa is choking me,” he says, voice low and harsh. “I can’t stand another day here. We’ll go to Asia, or Western Europe, or South America or something.”
Draco’s mouth drops open.
“There’s still plenty of money that I have to give away,” he continues, “But I can’t do this here anymore. I’ll die.”
“Are you mental?” Draco asks.
Harry feels defensive at his tone. “What do you mean?”
“We’ll leave here tonight if you like, or right now, fine by me. Just pay the check and tip the waitress and let’s go. Hell, I’ll even throw the parade,” Draco says dismissively before becoming serious, “But do not think for one minute in that silly head of yours that I am ever going on another one of these- these- excursions ever again.”
This catches Harry off guard, and he is unable to think of a reply before Draco continues.
“I’m through after this, Harry,” Draco says, and he looks at Harry in that moment as if the two have just met, as if he were no more than a stranger to Draco, with a cool disconnectedness in his eyes that shoots right to Harry’s heart. “Finished.”
And the finality in his voice is frightening to Harry; the idea that Draco will leave him is frightening.
“You can’t leave,” Harry says, panicking. He feels himself pulling at straws, mentally ticking off this reason and that reason until he finds one that has always worked before, that Draco has never been able to stand up to.
“Your five years isn’t up yet.”
Harry doesn’t look at Draco when he says it, not wanting to see the way his shoulders will go rigid and his eyes will harden. He means to put it gently, because it is always hanging over their heads, this silent understanding, always tarnishing every moment and every thing, this actuality of circumstance.
And no matter how many times they neglect to mention it, or try to forget it, or hold each other’s hands or kiss each other’s lips, it’s always there, this shadow of reality: Harry being the jailor and Draco the inmate. And it makes Harry’s throat clench to think of it that way, to be reminded of the real reason why Draco is with him now, why Draco has yet to leave him, because it takes what exists between them and cuts it off at the legs and leaves them with raw, bloody emotions.
And it doesn’t mean that Harry loves Draco any less. It only means that that love is more painful.
He looks at Draco over the single red carnation that rests between them on the tablecloth, and rather than seeing defeat, as Harry had expected, he sees defiance burning in Draco’s eyes.
“I’ll leave,” Draco says plainly.
Harry only stares in response.
“I will,” he threatens coolly, and Harry wonders how he can still manage to be so cold while it was always so hot here, so stiflingly hot everywhere they went. “I’ll walk out while you’re sleeping. Steal some of your money and catch a flight or train. I don’t have to stay.”
There is something in the way Draco’s eyes shine that borders on mania, on suicide, and reminds Harry of an animal cornered, whose only way out is to kill or be killed. And Harry wonders if Africa had really been that awful for Draco, that damaging that it would become a matter of life and death.
Or is it himself that Draco would die to be away from?
“You don’t have to stay?” Harry repeats. “The Ministry-”
“We’re in Africa, Harry, what is the Ministry going to do about it?” Draco interrupts.
“Well, they might try to find you. Do you honestly think that they would just let a convicted Death Eater, let alone a Malfoy, escape and go missing in a foreign country?”
Harry feels rather than sees Draco’s eyes boring into his, because the midday sun makes his hair almost too bright to look at, and it’s painful, looking at him. Harry has to squint.
“You wouldn’t tell them that I was gone,” Draco says, confident in himself.
And Harry realizes that pride had always been Draco’s most guilty sin. He had lived his life for it and arranged his alliances around it, and he suffered for it now, that Malfoy pride that came attached to the name. And yet, without it, where would Draco be? Who would he be? It was Draco’s pride that had made these four and a half years so excruciating for him, but it was the only thing keeping him sane now, that saves him now.
And Harry suddenly understands that there is nothing for them after this. ‘This’ being not just Africa, but the past four years and six months, and all of the things that had passed between them in that time and all of the things that hadn’t, that were no more than imaginings and dreams that became lost when you brought them into the light of day.
Harry looks at Draco and Draco is broken. Harry knows this, is sure of it like he’s sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that sometime thereafter, it will set. Because it was Harry who had done the breaking, Harry who had felt the snap under his thumb.
How could Harry have thought there would be an after with Draco when living through it must have been so unbearable?
“…I know you wouldn’t,” Draco is saying, and Harry is unsure if Draco has continued talking this entire time. He feels as if years have passed in these few seconds, and in them he has grown old and unspeakably weathered.
Draco holds his gaze defiantly, and Harry is the first to break away because looking at Draco hurts more so now, in more ways than one.
Something pulls at Harry and tells him that he can stop this, that Draco won’t leave if he gives him the right answers, says the right things. But what that might be, that right reason- it’s like the Saharan sand beneath his Nikes, pouring through his fingertips as he grasps at it. He can’t find it and so Harry has to give up, and he closes his eyes as he realizes this.
The red silhouette of Draco burns negative into the back of Harry’s eyelids, into his memory. He tilts his head back and the sun is hottest on his eyelids and the bottom of his jaw.
“And you would go where when you left?” Harry asks. “Be where?”
Draco’s voice is sure when he answers. “Anywhere.”
Harry brings his head back down and lets his eyes flutter open, and he takes a look around. Everything is white after keeping his eyes in the dark, everything so white, the sand and sky, and there is only this small café in this small town, and beyond that, in every other direction, nothing. Desert and sun and nothing. Draco had said himself, once, that there was nothing in Africa.
“More like nowhere,” Harry says.
They leave shortly after, and Draco doesn’t say anything the entire ride back to their hotel. He is unusually quiet the remainder of the night, and Harry does nothing to pull him out of it, to stop this or hold onto him, because he knows that Draco will do it, he will leave. Draco will do it and Harry will not stop him because Draco is owed that much after four and half years; Draco has earned that right.
Harry knows that one morning he will wake up and he will feel a chill for the first time in Africa because the bed will be empty and Draco will be gone. Harry knows that he will not notify the Ministry, and in six months, when the five years are finally over, he will tell them that Draco has decided to stay in Africa, that he has bought property on the beach and plans to build himself a bungalow with a large deck facing the water, and that Harry speaks with him regularly and not once have they talked about magic, about the war. He will do this to protect Draco. He will always protect Draco, until the day he dies.
Harry knows that there is nothing he can do to stop Draco for the simple reason that he shouldn’t, and he knows that he will do nothing about it after he’s gone.
Except, perhaps, miss him.
- -
The first night that Draco comes to Harry, they are camping in the middle of nowhere after driving for hours over dirt roads that never lead them to any hotels, only more wilderness, more of this endless African wilderness. The hard red clay is their carpet and the sky their roof, and Harry is nervous and can’t sleep because he thinks that he has gotten them lost, lost somewhere in the Serengeti, where a lion or cheetah or something is going to come up in the middle of the night and eat them while they are sleeping.
So Harry tells Draco to sleep in the car, and he lays out a thin blanket that Draco had snatched from some hotel on a clearing of dirt, surrounded by the tallest grass that he has ever seen. And he tries to sleep, but the stars are too bright and all of the sounds seem too close.
And then at some point Harry hears the car door open and close, and he thinks that Draco is getting up to take a piss and so he closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep, but the sound of Draco’s footsteps directly approaches the spot that Harry has made for himself. Draco stands over him for a moment, his figure casting a shadow over the blue and purple African starlight behind Harry’s eyelids. And then he asks in a soft whisper, Harry?
And Harry considers ignoring him, weighs the options between continuing to keep his eyes closed until Draco has left and opening them. And while keeping them closed seems to be such a promising proposal, when Draco says his name again, in a whisper so quiet and unsure that it hurts to ignore him, Harry realizes there might also be something promising, in an altogether different way, in Draco.
So Harry slowly opens his eyes, letting them adjust to the brightness of the night. Draco is standing over him, awash in the silver starlight, and he looks so beautiful like that, with his hair falling into his eyes and the shirt he wore from the day before wrinkled and unbuttoned almost to his waist, falling off of his left shoulder, that Harry thinks he would do anything that Draco asks of him in that moment, would have abandoned Africa forever, or walked straight into the bush and never came back, or loved Draco until those stars fell down on both their heads.
But instead Draco asks, hesitantly, and in a soft voice, if he may lie down?
And it’s awkward, the way he asks and the way he makes a half-motion with his right hand to the blanket, and Harry wishes that he had just done it without asking. But he only nods and smiles gently and makes room.
Harry shushes him when he tries to give his explanations, that the car was too cramped or that it smelled too much like sweat that wasn’t his. And then, with a smile to Draco’s back, Harry has to privately quell the urge to tell Draco that they have to be quiet or else the lions will hear them, because he doesn’t want to scare Draco. He only wants to lie here with him in the middle of nowhere and to observe the way the starlight falls on his skin, casting shadows on places that Harry has never looked at properly before, like the nape of his neck and the curve of his lower back beneath his shirt. It’s new and invigorating and quickening Harry’s pulse, these discoveries he has made, but he is hungry and he wants more, and his hand is coming up and his fingertips are tracing the perfect line from Draco’s neck to the edge of his shoulder and Draco is turning around, he is sparkling and beautiful and here, kissing him back.
Harry wraps himself around Draco, breathes deeply the smells of the grasslands and the night and this moment of Africa, suspended.
- -
The following day they are scheduled to return to London.
Their flight is at 7:00 a.m., so Harry sets the alarm for 5:30, but the next morning he is awake by 5:00, because something pulls him from his sleep, because something is not right.
Because he is cold.
- -
“The exchange rates will be preposterous,” Harry is saying, “By the time I get there and exchange the money, I’ll have to give away fifty times as much.”
Remus laughs, saying, “Damn Britain for being so wealthy. Whatever will you do, Harry?” he asks as his laughter fades into a small smile, which, Harry thinks, disappears altogether far too quickly.
“I’ll just have to work a little harder to find the most devastation, I suppose,” Harry says jokingly.
It’s quiet for a beat before Remus speaks. “Be careful with yourself, Harry,” he says earnestly.
Harry smiles easily. “I know, I know, Africa is dangerous and whatnot. A whole other world. But don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Remus looks at him with unguarded eyes for a moment, and the doubt and concern that Harry sees in them runs so deeply that he is positive he has misunderstood Remus’ meaning, that he was not talking about the dangers of Africa at all, but something else entirely.
But just as suddenly as it had come, the moment is gone, and Remus is standing and collecting their teacups, Harry’s empty and his own untouched, as he says, “I hope that you will be, Harry. I hope that you will.”
Harry smiles at him as he shrugs on his coat. “I’ll come to see you as soon as I’m back, and I’ll tell you all about my wonderful and sordid African adventures,” he says with a wink.
- -
Harry arrives at the airport early and alone.
He waits for his flight in the hard, straightbacked terminal chairs, which remind him of children’s playground chairs, gaudy plastic things in red and orange and bright blue. He has his legs propped up on the chair opposite, slowly going numb from the hip down, and his rucksack, which is almost completely empty by now, is stuffed behind his head. He is slumped in his seat with his eyes closed, unwashed and unshaven going on days now, but he thinks he still looks good for a man coming apart at the seams.
The only activity in the terminal is in the Starbucks to Harry’s right as the espresso machine whirls and whooshes and Harry wonders whatever for, because he hasn’t seen anyone order any coffee just yet. He has only seen the woman who works there, probably a native, tall and dark with an Ethiopian neck, sitting silent at one of the tables in her khakis and black collared shirt. Her legs are crossed to the side of the table and she is reading an African magazine with the photo of a woman holding her child her arms, when Harry realizes with a start that he hasn’t yet bought a gift for the baby, who is due in two days.
He wonders how Hermione would react if her child’s first present from his or her godfather were an African Tribal mask. While Harry foresees it as not favorable, he thinks George might get a kick out of it. But Hermione would look at him sternly and remind him that he or she is just a baby, artwork is really not on the agenda yet, and didn’t Harry think that one of those nice, educational books with the sound effect buttons would have been more appropriate and beneficial? But she would hang the mask in the baby’s room anyway, because she does like it, she would reassure him, it’s just she wouldn’t have picked it out, and Harry thinks her child will probably grow up to have some weird phobia of it, of masks or puppets or whatever.
He rubs his forehead, pinching the skin at his brow. Once he got home, he would just Apparate to Diagon Alley right quick and find one of those books with the sounds and-
Apparate. Harry sits up suddenly, cursing his thickness. He could just Apparate home, of course. It would be as easy as visualizing his flat, his favorite chair in the sitting room, right besides the window. He feels like an idiot for not having thought of it sooner.
He gets up from the plastic terminal seat and grabs his pack and tries to find somewhere secluded, although he doubts that anyone in the terminal would have noticed. He finds the nearest restroom, but there is a native man emptying the rubbish, wearing a jumpsuit with what Harry assumes to be the Nigeran word for janitor on the back. The man nods once at Harry, and he notices that the whites of the man’s eyes have become dull with age, and that his left eye is clouded over by a cataract. Harry returns the nod as he heads for the sink, a viable excuse, he thinks, given his present appearance. The man quickly replaces the old rubbish bag with a new one, and then he is finished, and he is pushing his cart of cleaning supplies out of the bathroom and letting the door swing shut silently, leaving Harry to himself in the small loo.
He turns off the tap, dries his hands, and tries to recall the image of home as his eyes fall closed. But what Harry sees is not his kitchen, or his bedroom or his favorite sitting chair or any other part of his flat. He sees Draco. Draco, smiling at him on the plane to Senegal; Draco, sitting on the edge of the bed in Harry’s guest bedroom with a captured look in his eyes and a defeated posture; Draco, as he turns to Harry on a small blanket they share in the middle of the savanna, under an arm’s-length sky, and puts his hands on either side of Harry’s face and kisses him softly, tasting of hesitance and spearmint and all of the good things that Harry remembers about Africa.
Draco fucking Malfoy.
Harry sighs and opens his eyes, runs a hand through his tangled hair.
But Draco is gone now.
He avoids looking at himself in the mirror as he pulls his ticket from the back pocket of his trousers. The word LONDON is written in bold, red ink, and it brings forth images of crowded rain-soaked streets and gum stains on the pavement and people, so many people in London, all in a hurry to get somewhere, to do something. Everyone has his or her own agendas and priorities there, and Harry wonders, when had his own changed from being the same as everyone else’s, from getting to work on time and doing the grocery shopping and preparing dinner before it got too late, and maybe meeting someone along the way, someone to spend his time with and make him happy? When had he stopped wanting that? When had his priorities evolved into something else?
Harry had thought he came here to find something, that somewhere within everywhere. He had thought that that was what he needed, that that would make him whole.
He had tried to save these people, save all of them with his money, and he likes to think that maybe he succeeded most of the time. But it was only money, only paper and ink and a little bit of metal, and it stuck together in the rain and was good for nothing. But happiness, or love, or whatever you wanted to call it, whatever was real salvation- that didn’t come from money, whether you were receiving it or giving it away.
Harry had thought that this was his sacrament. He had imagined something like security in numbers, the more he helped the better off he would be. That he would earn his own salvation by passing it out to others, to those in need, but he had done nothing to keep his from leaving in the middle of the night.
And so it left him here, alone in a men’s room in central Niger holding a single first class ticket to London, with nothing to call his except the empty rucksack on the counter and this ticket. He smells of unwashed tears and sweat and doesn’t even know how to rescue himself. He doesn’t know what will work. Because when he had tried to control it, tried to dictate where and to whom salvation went, it still hadn’t come, and when he had done nothing, it had walked away from him and left the sheets cold.
He tucks the returning ticket back into his pocket and walks out of the bathroom just as the old janitor is passing by out of the women’s restroom. He nods at Harry again, smiling, and his teeth are straight but not the perfect white they probably once were, and when he walks away it’s with a slight limp, and he reminds Harry so sharply of Remus then, gentle and kind and older now, more tattered, but so were all of them. Harry is overcome, and he checks his pockets for money, nothing there, and as he reaches for his shoe he suddenly remembers the stash in his pack. He pulls it out and goes after the man.
“Sir,” Harry calls out, hoping that he will speak some English. “Sir!”
The man stops and turns, looking concerned. He has a scar under his left eye shaped like a crescent moon.
Harry puts the money into the man’s hand and smiles at him, saying, “Here. Take this.”
The man looks at the money. He shakes his head and looks at Harry and tries to hand it back, but Harry won’t take it.
“I want you to have it,” Harry says, and his heart twists with sincerity.
But the man doesn’t take it. He firmly but gently seizes Harry’s wrist and pushes the money into the palm of his hand. There are calluses at the bottoms of his fingers and his joints. His skin is warm, and so is his smile as he shakes his head at Harry and motions to his cleaning supplies, as if to say, No, you see? I don’t need your handouts, I work; I earn my money, and I’m proud of that.
Harry folds his fingers closed around the money and nods shortly. The bills crumple in his hand.
The man walks off, steering his cart around Harry and holding his head high as he limps away, but he turns back briefly and waves, smiling. Harry finds himself smiling back. And he hasn’t saved this old man, hasn’t given him the money to quit this job and retire somewhere along the beach or on patch of land somewhere. Harry hasn’t given him anything, and yet-
Yet he feels like this man has given him something, that the warmth of the man’s smile and the gentleness of his hands have saved some small piece of Harry himself.
And Harry realizes that salvation is not a scale to be balanced, or a weighing of one deed against another, this versus that. It comes from the way you live, judges you by the decisions that you make from day to day, moment to moment, in the things that you do to make life tolerable, before there was no life left at all.
Harry knows he doesn’t have all of the answers. He may not even have any. And he may have lost a few.
But he knows that this is just a piece of something bigger, something greater, only the beginning of an end that he can’t be sure of but thinks-hopes- believes is the answer. And this searching, this blind gathering of small salvations such as this, is exhilarating, is better than discovering magic, better than anything else in the world that he can think of.
And in that moment he makes his choice.
He goes to the gift shop and buys a post card to send to Hermione, apologizing for missing his godson’s or goddaughter’s birth, and he dearly hopes that she will understand and he wants her to know that just because he isn’t there doesn’t mean that she’ll never hear from him or again, or that he doesn’t love her dearly. Then he buys a leaf of note writing paper, which is light blue with the word “Africa” watermarked across the middle in a large, tropical type, to write a letter to Remus, because he made a promise and doesn’t intend on breaking it. And he buys a clean shirt for himself, linen, cream, and it makes him smile when he passes his hand over the fabric.
And then he exchanges his London ticket for a one way to South America, which also makes him smile.
- -
Harry thinks, once, that this must be the only place in the world.
He tries to prove himself wrong by ascending to the top of the tallest sand dune he can find, but all he sees from there is more of the same nothingness, more of the same cloudless, white-blue sky and rolling desert. There, he can find no reason to believe that anything else might exist beyond where the sky meets the sand, no reason to remember that he is not the only person left in this world.
He tilts his head back to the sun and shuts his eyes and holds out his arms, and with his palms open to the sky and his throat tight with sudden emotion, he howls:
“IS THIS ALL?”
And there is no answer.
Finis
Final Note: While this is a fictional story borrowing characters from a series we all know and love, the economic, social and political problems that Harry and Draco encounter and try to solve are very, very real. If you would like to help, or are considering it, you can visit The World Vision website, or any of the many other trusted sites that accept donations for more information.
Previous part
- -
Harry steps to the side and allows Malfoy to enter first. He closes the door behind them both and looks at Malfoy, who is not looking at him.
“So this is it,” he says, coming around Malfoy, holding his arms out.
Harry is proud of his flat. It is simple and spacious while not being too overbearing, with hardwood floors, clean lines, muted colors. It is comfortable but stylish. Anybody would have loved it.
“What do you think?” he asks, regretting the words the moment they leave his mouth. He braces himself for the worst.
But Malfoy surprises him when he says, simply, “It’s nice.”
Harry falters. “Thank you,” he says, after a beat.
He gives Malfoy the tour, which is much shorter, he had tried to joke, than what he assumes a grand tour at Malfoy Manor would be like. But this elicits nothing from Malfoy, who seems to still be locked away in Azkaban for all the emotion that Harry is able to get out him.
Harry shows Malfoy to a room at the end of the hallway.
“This’ll be your room,” he says as he opens the door for both of them.
Malfoy looks around briefly before he takes a seat on the edge of the bed, and Harry suddenly feels like an intruder in his own home, which he finds an unwelcome feeling, this being his home after all; this being his room. He is torn between asserting himself before Malfoy and reminding him that he’s here, in Harry’s guest bedroom, sitting on Harry’s Egyptian cotton bedspread instead of Azkaban because of Harry, because Harry saved him- and the shameful expression in Malfoy’s eyes that begs him not to and tells him that he already knows far better than Harry ever could.
He sighs. And Harry isn’t sure why he does it, the maybes and possibilities as endless as they are, but he chooses to give Malfoy that small reminder as he walks out and closes the door behind him.
“Five years, then.”
And the click of the door as it closes sounds to Harry like an ending, like a metal-snapping conclusion or death, but Harry knows that this is only the beginning.
- -
They arrive in Niger seven days after leaving Guinea, and the first thing Harry notices is that most of the airport employees are white, with English or French accents, and almost all of them are sunburned. The woman who helps them at the hire car desk is short and blonde, with dark eyebrows and a double chin. She tells Harry that the company has given his car away by accident and that there is nothing they can do about it and that they are terribly sorry, but won’t he please step aside so that the next in line may be helped?
Harry wants to leave before he has even stepped outside of the airport. Already he doesn’t like it here.
“Look, it’s not that big of a deal,” Draco says as he tries to comfort him. “We’ll just pay someone to drive us around. That way we’ll have a car and get rid of some money. It’s win-win, really.”
Harry feels wary about this place. He is seriously considering walking back into the airport and getting on the next departing plane that will take them somewhere else, some other African city where the people needed him just as much.
“Draco, I’m not sure-”
“Look, there’s one now,” Draco offers. “He looks trustworthy.” He points across the street to a gas station, where a native young man in an amber Florida tourist t-shirt is leaning against an old lorry that might have been white once, but most of the paint was eroded off. Draco quickly checks the traffic and crosses the street, calling behind him, “The sooner we get rid of the money, the sooner we can leave.”
By the time Harry catches up with him, Draco is already in the midst of negotiating in his own language of African-English with the man, who is really closer in age to a boy, possibly no more than seventeen or eighteen.
“You is driving us to out of city in car, yes?” Draco says, his voice rather loud, his huge smile painfully fake. He is leaning in close to the boy, as if that will help him understand.
“Yes, yes,” the boy answers, “I is driving for you.”
He seems overjoyed by this proposition. He holds his hands together in front of his chest like a small child asking for candy and smiles broadly, which makes his ears stick out awkwardly. There is a dusting of black freckles on the tip of his nose and cheeks, and his skin looks clean and smooth. He glances at Harry, and his good humor seems so genuine that Harry finds himself smiling back.
“To places where the poor is living?” Draco asks loudly.
There are other people at this gas station, tourists, Harry estimates, if their rucksacks and visors are anything to go by. They look at Draco oddly.
The boy appears confused. “Pour?” he asks.
Draco looks to be considering this. “No money,” he says after some thought. “To where they is having no money and is living bad.”
That much the boy understands, and he nods his head emphatically. “Yes, they is being very poor there.”
“What is they calling you?” Harry asks, before he can rearrange the words in his head. Draco smirks at him.
The boy’s smile widens, which Harry hadn’t thought would be possible.
“They is calling me Yerodin,” he says.
“Yerodin,” Draco says, “we go now?”
Yerodin smiles and brings the keys to the lorry out of his pocket. He is all smiles and big ears as he climbs into the driver seat and starts the engine. Harry and Draco sit in the far back, in the flatbed, which is surprisingly clean for being so old, and easily large enough to fit two or three more back there, and they sit on almost opposite sides.
Niger is pure, red-golden Sahara desert. The ground is a deep, thick carpet of sand, and the air is hot and dry like nothing Harry has ever felt before. He imagines that this is what the surface of the sun would be like, and the landscape is amber-orange stained and rolling sand dunes for as far as the eye can see. The sky is a clear expanse of white-white-blue from one horizon to the next.
The wind is hot, and it burns Harry’s cheeks and lips and dries his throat, and he has never wanted a drink of water so badly before in all of his life. He thinks his throat might be covered in sand, because it’s everywhere else, in his eyes and hair and mouth and just everywhere.
Draco’s hand suddenly comes down clumsily on top of his, and Harry turns to look at him through squinted eyes.
He says something that Harry can’t make out. The wind and sand steal the words away before they can reach his ears.
“What?” Harry yells.
“I want to go home!” Draco repeats.
Harry nods in agreement and takes Draco’s hand in his despite the fact that they’re hands are like sandpaper, dried and coarse, and the friction between the two is uncomfortable and abrasive. Harry would have withstood it and held on forever if Draco had wanted him to.
The lorry begins to slow, and finally Harry can open his eyes without the immediate threat of flying sand to his vision. Draco pulls his hand away and turns round, towards the approaching destination. There is a village just ahead, which is bigger than Harry had expected, than he has so far experienced, with more shacks than he can automatically count, and he has to estimate how many there might be; anywhere from 25 to 35, he guesses. A sinking feeling comes over him inexplicably as the lorry rolls closer.
Draco bangs on the rear window and tells to Yerodin to stop, and Harry suddenly feels right again, because he thinks that Draco is going to tell him to turn around. He thinks Draco is going to demand that he return them to the airport, and they will purchase tickets to Nigeria or Zimbabwe or wherever, and finally leave this place and its hot air and sodding sand behind.
But instead Draco turns to him and says, “This is all yours, Harry.” He climbs out of the flatbed and gets into the passenger seat beside Yerodin. His door bangs shut, a loud and rusted clack, and Harry feels all of his hopes fall to the desert floor.
The lorry begins to roll forward, and they’re almost there, and the people are starting to notice them, are beginning to move towards the vehicle. Harry gets slowly to his feet, touching his pockets to make sure the money is ready, and he tells himself that this won’t be so bad, that he’ll just hand out the money as they pass through, and there are plenty of people so he’ll be sure to get rid of it all in one day, and then he and Draco can be on a plane by tomorrow morning, or tonight if there were any available.
They are only about fifty meters out at this point, and some of the natives have started running towards the pickup. The first to get there is a boy, no older than 10 or 11, who walks along side the lorry as it keeps moving, dressed in a tank top and khakis that are about five sizes too big, held up only by a piece a rope through the belt loops. He holds his hand out to Harry and says something in a language Harry that doesn’t know, but he understands the desperation in his voice, can see it in the boy’s huge almond-shaped eyes, and Harry gives him the entirety of the first lump of cash. The relief in his eyes is almost enough for Harry to drown in.
But then another boy, this one older, sixteen perhaps, grabs Harry’s forearm and says something to him with narrowed eyes that sounds like it might be an accusation, motioning to Harry’s shirt pocket, from which he had just removed the money. Harry looks at him coldly and tries to snatch his arm away, but the boy has a good grip, and he’s strong, stronger than Harry remembers he or Ron being at that age. Harry tries again, pulling as hard as he dares while trying to avoid a dislocated shoulder, but the boy’s grasp on his arm holds hard, and suddenly Harry feels that he is the one being pulled, being yanked down, and this boy has eyes are that black and cruel. Harry stumbles and almost pitches forward and suddenly becomes very aware of the exact distance between himself and the ground, when his survival instincts kick in and he slams down to his knees on the flatbed to give himself more leverage, and it’s down to a game of tug and war between himself and this boy, this sixteen-year-old who is looking at Harry like he is the one personally responsible for all of this, from the scar across his cheek to the dirty, tattered shirt on his back to the sand in the desert and the heat of the sun and the holy injustice of it all.
They struggle for a moment more before Harry gives one final yank and falls backwards, banging his head against the tire well. His vision swims briefly in darkness before clearing, and he sits up slowly, rubbing the back of his head, thinking that that will smart later. A hand reaches for him from behind, clasping onto his collar briefly before falling away and wrenching at his shoulders. Harry turns his head and sees that they have reached the interior of the village, and what seems to be every single inhabitant has come out to swarm their lorry and beg for money. There has to be over fifty of them, Harry guesses, four or five deep on all sides of the flatbed, and they reach for him and grasp at whatever they can, as if their hands themselves are hungry for Harry’s skin, his shirt, his hair, and he has to move to the middle of the flatbed so that they can’t touch him. And then he stands up, to put more distance between himself and the people.
They look at him like he might be the Second Coming or the prime minister or the president or whoever answers to their problems; whoever IS their answer. They hold their hands out to him, palms up and open, the sleeves of their faded and threadbare t-shirts riding up, so loose that Harry can see their ribs protruding from the skin on their sides. They are calling him, screaming at him from all sides, telling their stories to him in languages he never thought existed as they crowd the flatbed, chests to sun-eroded paint and metal, and he feels suffocated by their need, swallowed whole by it.
Their eyes are wide and shockingly white against their black skin. Their voices break as they cry out to him. Their teeth are perfect.
And it’s wrong, Harry suddenly realizes, it isn’t right, the way they look at him, the people here. Desperate and hungry and seeming to say Save me, save me, isn’t that what you’re here for? as they grasp at the ends of his cream linen shirt, which Draco had insisted he buy at the airport gift shop to keep cool, and even though it was painfully expensive, he did, yes, he bought it just to see the smile on Draco’s face when Harry wore it the next day, and the people’s hands are so dark and so dry that Harry becomes suddenly so thirsty he thinks he might die of it, might crumble to pieces right then and there, as stone and sand. And this isn’t just the wrong place or the wrong time, it’s the wrong idea, the wrong bloody notion.
Who was he to think he could save these people, even a few, two or three or four?
Who was he to think he could save anybody?
Harry yells to Yerodin not to stop, to drive until they are far from here, and he avoids Draco’s eyes when he looks back at him from the passenger seat. Harry takes a seat at the far end of the flatbed, his back to the tailgate, and the reflection in the lorry’s rear glass window is of the Nigerans running after them, arms extended, and of himself, in his linen shirt, crisp and clean, the unassuming color of sand, as he does nothing.
- -
The skies here are a thicker gray than Harry remembers ever seeing before, having become accustomed to England’s rain clouds, white-gray and high up as they were, so high up that they seemed far beyond any matter that would have to do with Harry, or with anyone else. The sky over England, and over the rest of the world, it was untouchable, indifferent to everything that happened below.
But it was different here, as everything seemed different. The clouds in Africa hang low, close to the ground, so close that Harry thinks he can feel them brushing the top of his head and wetting the palms of his hands. And they are deeper here: darker, fuller, and the thunder makes the ground shake and rumbles of something other than a mere scientific reaction to lightning.
Harry thinks that this is perhaps why Africa has remained so untouched, so sacred still, this closeness.
- -
Harry has this dream later that night:
He is standing on the same cliff in Guinea they had been before, and he can hear the rain as it beats on the leaves of the trees and falls on the ground, but he is dry and there isn’t a drop coming from the dark clouds over his head, and he doesn’t think that this is odd, that this is out of the ordinary in the least. He peers over the edge of the cliff and there are thousands of natives clinging to the side of the mountain, their grips slipping as they call out to him, cry for his help in a thousand languages that he doesn’t understand.
He falls back from the brink and stumbles into something, and when he turns he sees Draco standing over him, and he is drenched in the rain that isn’t falling, and there are drops rolling off of his cheeks like tears.
“Don’t push me,” Harry says, and he has to shout because he can barely hear himself over the sound of the non-rain. “Draco, please don’t push me over.”
Draco looks confused. “Push you?”
Harry glances over his shoulder, and it’s such a long way down, such a very, very long way to the bottom. He turns back but Draco has disappeared, and suddenly the rain arrives, pouring over his skin and hair and soaking his clothes, and the sound isn’t that of rain, but of the voices of all the people he hadn’t been able to save, their cries of help and accusations of neglect, echoing with every drop that falls. The ground beneath his feet becomes unsteady and slick with the pouring rain and he slips, and he is falling backwards, falling over the edge, and it is nothing like flying or being free.
It is only falling.
- -
“I know you wanted to save me,” Draco is saying, and Harry wonders if this is a dream, if this has perhaps never really happened, because nothing exists except for them, no time or place or detail.
There is only Draco, and the way his hands tremble when he holds Harry’s hand so tightly he thinks the bones will break.
“I know you wanted to save me,” Draco is saying, “But I feel like you’ve killed me instead.”
- -
“We have to leave here,” Harry says. “Go someplace else.”
“What?” Draco asks, turning to look at him.
It is the middle of the day, and they are still in Niger, having lunch at an outdoor café, and the existence of such a thing in such an unbearably hot place baffles Harry, makes his head spin, or maybe that is the heat.
He sets his drink on the white tablecloth and leans forward. “Africa is choking me,” he says, voice low and harsh. “I can’t stand another day here. We’ll go to Asia, or Western Europe, or South America or something.”
Draco’s mouth drops open.
“There’s still plenty of money that I have to give away,” he continues, “But I can’t do this here anymore. I’ll die.”
“Are you mental?” Draco asks.
Harry feels defensive at his tone. “What do you mean?”
“We’ll leave here tonight if you like, or right now, fine by me. Just pay the check and tip the waitress and let’s go. Hell, I’ll even throw the parade,” Draco says dismissively before becoming serious, “But do not think for one minute in that silly head of yours that I am ever going on another one of these- these- excursions ever again.”
This catches Harry off guard, and he is unable to think of a reply before Draco continues.
“I’m through after this, Harry,” Draco says, and he looks at Harry in that moment as if the two have just met, as if he were no more than a stranger to Draco, with a cool disconnectedness in his eyes that shoots right to Harry’s heart. “Finished.”
And the finality in his voice is frightening to Harry; the idea that Draco will leave him is frightening.
“You can’t leave,” Harry says, panicking. He feels himself pulling at straws, mentally ticking off this reason and that reason until he finds one that has always worked before, that Draco has never been able to stand up to.
“Your five years isn’t up yet.”
Harry doesn’t look at Draco when he says it, not wanting to see the way his shoulders will go rigid and his eyes will harden. He means to put it gently, because it is always hanging over their heads, this silent understanding, always tarnishing every moment and every thing, this actuality of circumstance.
And no matter how many times they neglect to mention it, or try to forget it, or hold each other’s hands or kiss each other’s lips, it’s always there, this shadow of reality: Harry being the jailor and Draco the inmate. And it makes Harry’s throat clench to think of it that way, to be reminded of the real reason why Draco is with him now, why Draco has yet to leave him, because it takes what exists between them and cuts it off at the legs and leaves them with raw, bloody emotions.
And it doesn’t mean that Harry loves Draco any less. It only means that that love is more painful.
He looks at Draco over the single red carnation that rests between them on the tablecloth, and rather than seeing defeat, as Harry had expected, he sees defiance burning in Draco’s eyes.
“I’ll leave,” Draco says plainly.
Harry only stares in response.
“I will,” he threatens coolly, and Harry wonders how he can still manage to be so cold while it was always so hot here, so stiflingly hot everywhere they went. “I’ll walk out while you’re sleeping. Steal some of your money and catch a flight or train. I don’t have to stay.”
There is something in the way Draco’s eyes shine that borders on mania, on suicide, and reminds Harry of an animal cornered, whose only way out is to kill or be killed. And Harry wonders if Africa had really been that awful for Draco, that damaging that it would become a matter of life and death.
Or is it himself that Draco would die to be away from?
“You don’t have to stay?” Harry repeats. “The Ministry-”
“We’re in Africa, Harry, what is the Ministry going to do about it?” Draco interrupts.
“Well, they might try to find you. Do you honestly think that they would just let a convicted Death Eater, let alone a Malfoy, escape and go missing in a foreign country?”
Harry feels rather than sees Draco’s eyes boring into his, because the midday sun makes his hair almost too bright to look at, and it’s painful, looking at him. Harry has to squint.
“You wouldn’t tell them that I was gone,” Draco says, confident in himself.
And Harry realizes that pride had always been Draco’s most guilty sin. He had lived his life for it and arranged his alliances around it, and he suffered for it now, that Malfoy pride that came attached to the name. And yet, without it, where would Draco be? Who would he be? It was Draco’s pride that had made these four and a half years so excruciating for him, but it was the only thing keeping him sane now, that saves him now.
And Harry suddenly understands that there is nothing for them after this. ‘This’ being not just Africa, but the past four years and six months, and all of the things that had passed between them in that time and all of the things that hadn’t, that were no more than imaginings and dreams that became lost when you brought them into the light of day.
Harry looks at Draco and Draco is broken. Harry knows this, is sure of it like he’s sure that the sun will rise tomorrow, and that sometime thereafter, it will set. Because it was Harry who had done the breaking, Harry who had felt the snap under his thumb.
How could Harry have thought there would be an after with Draco when living through it must have been so unbearable?
“…I know you wouldn’t,” Draco is saying, and Harry is unsure if Draco has continued talking this entire time. He feels as if years have passed in these few seconds, and in them he has grown old and unspeakably weathered.
Draco holds his gaze defiantly, and Harry is the first to break away because looking at Draco hurts more so now, in more ways than one.
Something pulls at Harry and tells him that he can stop this, that Draco won’t leave if he gives him the right answers, says the right things. But what that might be, that right reason- it’s like the Saharan sand beneath his Nikes, pouring through his fingertips as he grasps at it. He can’t find it and so Harry has to give up, and he closes his eyes as he realizes this.
The red silhouette of Draco burns negative into the back of Harry’s eyelids, into his memory. He tilts his head back and the sun is hottest on his eyelids and the bottom of his jaw.
“And you would go where when you left?” Harry asks. “Be where?”
Draco’s voice is sure when he answers. “Anywhere.”
Harry brings his head back down and lets his eyes flutter open, and he takes a look around. Everything is white after keeping his eyes in the dark, everything so white, the sand and sky, and there is only this small café in this small town, and beyond that, in every other direction, nothing. Desert and sun and nothing. Draco had said himself, once, that there was nothing in Africa.
“More like nowhere,” Harry says.
They leave shortly after, and Draco doesn’t say anything the entire ride back to their hotel. He is unusually quiet the remainder of the night, and Harry does nothing to pull him out of it, to stop this or hold onto him, because he knows that Draco will do it, he will leave. Draco will do it and Harry will not stop him because Draco is owed that much after four and half years; Draco has earned that right.
Harry knows that one morning he will wake up and he will feel a chill for the first time in Africa because the bed will be empty and Draco will be gone. Harry knows that he will not notify the Ministry, and in six months, when the five years are finally over, he will tell them that Draco has decided to stay in Africa, that he has bought property on the beach and plans to build himself a bungalow with a large deck facing the water, and that Harry speaks with him regularly and not once have they talked about magic, about the war. He will do this to protect Draco. He will always protect Draco, until the day he dies.
Harry knows that there is nothing he can do to stop Draco for the simple reason that he shouldn’t, and he knows that he will do nothing about it after he’s gone.
Except, perhaps, miss him.
- -
The first night that Draco comes to Harry, they are camping in the middle of nowhere after driving for hours over dirt roads that never lead them to any hotels, only more wilderness, more of this endless African wilderness. The hard red clay is their carpet and the sky their roof, and Harry is nervous and can’t sleep because he thinks that he has gotten them lost, lost somewhere in the Serengeti, where a lion or cheetah or something is going to come up in the middle of the night and eat them while they are sleeping.
So Harry tells Draco to sleep in the car, and he lays out a thin blanket that Draco had snatched from some hotel on a clearing of dirt, surrounded by the tallest grass that he has ever seen. And he tries to sleep, but the stars are too bright and all of the sounds seem too close.
And then at some point Harry hears the car door open and close, and he thinks that Draco is getting up to take a piss and so he closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep, but the sound of Draco’s footsteps directly approaches the spot that Harry has made for himself. Draco stands over him for a moment, his figure casting a shadow over the blue and purple African starlight behind Harry’s eyelids. And then he asks in a soft whisper, Harry?
And Harry considers ignoring him, weighs the options between continuing to keep his eyes closed until Draco has left and opening them. And while keeping them closed seems to be such a promising proposal, when Draco says his name again, in a whisper so quiet and unsure that it hurts to ignore him, Harry realizes there might also be something promising, in an altogether different way, in Draco.
So Harry slowly opens his eyes, letting them adjust to the brightness of the night. Draco is standing over him, awash in the silver starlight, and he looks so beautiful like that, with his hair falling into his eyes and the shirt he wore from the day before wrinkled and unbuttoned almost to his waist, falling off of his left shoulder, that Harry thinks he would do anything that Draco asks of him in that moment, would have abandoned Africa forever, or walked straight into the bush and never came back, or loved Draco until those stars fell down on both their heads.
But instead Draco asks, hesitantly, and in a soft voice, if he may lie down?
And it’s awkward, the way he asks and the way he makes a half-motion with his right hand to the blanket, and Harry wishes that he had just done it without asking. But he only nods and smiles gently and makes room.
Harry shushes him when he tries to give his explanations, that the car was too cramped or that it smelled too much like sweat that wasn’t his. And then, with a smile to Draco’s back, Harry has to privately quell the urge to tell Draco that they have to be quiet or else the lions will hear them, because he doesn’t want to scare Draco. He only wants to lie here with him in the middle of nowhere and to observe the way the starlight falls on his skin, casting shadows on places that Harry has never looked at properly before, like the nape of his neck and the curve of his lower back beneath his shirt. It’s new and invigorating and quickening Harry’s pulse, these discoveries he has made, but he is hungry and he wants more, and his hand is coming up and his fingertips are tracing the perfect line from Draco’s neck to the edge of his shoulder and Draco is turning around, he is sparkling and beautiful and here, kissing him back.
Harry wraps himself around Draco, breathes deeply the smells of the grasslands and the night and this moment of Africa, suspended.
- -
The following day they are scheduled to return to London.
Their flight is at 7:00 a.m., so Harry sets the alarm for 5:30, but the next morning he is awake by 5:00, because something pulls him from his sleep, because something is not right.
Because he is cold.
- -
“The exchange rates will be preposterous,” Harry is saying, “By the time I get there and exchange the money, I’ll have to give away fifty times as much.”
Remus laughs, saying, “Damn Britain for being so wealthy. Whatever will you do, Harry?” he asks as his laughter fades into a small smile, which, Harry thinks, disappears altogether far too quickly.
“I’ll just have to work a little harder to find the most devastation, I suppose,” Harry says jokingly.
It’s quiet for a beat before Remus speaks. “Be careful with yourself, Harry,” he says earnestly.
Harry smiles easily. “I know, I know, Africa is dangerous and whatnot. A whole other world. But don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
Remus looks at him with unguarded eyes for a moment, and the doubt and concern that Harry sees in them runs so deeply that he is positive he has misunderstood Remus’ meaning, that he was not talking about the dangers of Africa at all, but something else entirely.
But just as suddenly as it had come, the moment is gone, and Remus is standing and collecting their teacups, Harry’s empty and his own untouched, as he says, “I hope that you will be, Harry. I hope that you will.”
Harry smiles at him as he shrugs on his coat. “I’ll come to see you as soon as I’m back, and I’ll tell you all about my wonderful and sordid African adventures,” he says with a wink.
- -
Harry arrives at the airport early and alone.
He waits for his flight in the hard, straightbacked terminal chairs, which remind him of children’s playground chairs, gaudy plastic things in red and orange and bright blue. He has his legs propped up on the chair opposite, slowly going numb from the hip down, and his rucksack, which is almost completely empty by now, is stuffed behind his head. He is slumped in his seat with his eyes closed, unwashed and unshaven going on days now, but he thinks he still looks good for a man coming apart at the seams.
The only activity in the terminal is in the Starbucks to Harry’s right as the espresso machine whirls and whooshes and Harry wonders whatever for, because he hasn’t seen anyone order any coffee just yet. He has only seen the woman who works there, probably a native, tall and dark with an Ethiopian neck, sitting silent at one of the tables in her khakis and black collared shirt. Her legs are crossed to the side of the table and she is reading an African magazine with the photo of a woman holding her child her arms, when Harry realizes with a start that he hasn’t yet bought a gift for the baby, who is due in two days.
He wonders how Hermione would react if her child’s first present from his or her godfather were an African Tribal mask. While Harry foresees it as not favorable, he thinks George might get a kick out of it. But Hermione would look at him sternly and remind him that he or she is just a baby, artwork is really not on the agenda yet, and didn’t Harry think that one of those nice, educational books with the sound effect buttons would have been more appropriate and beneficial? But she would hang the mask in the baby’s room anyway, because she does like it, she would reassure him, it’s just she wouldn’t have picked it out, and Harry thinks her child will probably grow up to have some weird phobia of it, of masks or puppets or whatever.
He rubs his forehead, pinching the skin at his brow. Once he got home, he would just Apparate to Diagon Alley right quick and find one of those books with the sounds and-
Apparate. Harry sits up suddenly, cursing his thickness. He could just Apparate home, of course. It would be as easy as visualizing his flat, his favorite chair in the sitting room, right besides the window. He feels like an idiot for not having thought of it sooner.
He gets up from the plastic terminal seat and grabs his pack and tries to find somewhere secluded, although he doubts that anyone in the terminal would have noticed. He finds the nearest restroom, but there is a native man emptying the rubbish, wearing a jumpsuit with what Harry assumes to be the Nigeran word for janitor on the back. The man nods once at Harry, and he notices that the whites of the man’s eyes have become dull with age, and that his left eye is clouded over by a cataract. Harry returns the nod as he heads for the sink, a viable excuse, he thinks, given his present appearance. The man quickly replaces the old rubbish bag with a new one, and then he is finished, and he is pushing his cart of cleaning supplies out of the bathroom and letting the door swing shut silently, leaving Harry to himself in the small loo.
He turns off the tap, dries his hands, and tries to recall the image of home as his eyes fall closed. But what Harry sees is not his kitchen, or his bedroom or his favorite sitting chair or any other part of his flat. He sees Draco. Draco, smiling at him on the plane to Senegal; Draco, sitting on the edge of the bed in Harry’s guest bedroom with a captured look in his eyes and a defeated posture; Draco, as he turns to Harry on a small blanket they share in the middle of the savanna, under an arm’s-length sky, and puts his hands on either side of Harry’s face and kisses him softly, tasting of hesitance and spearmint and all of the good things that Harry remembers about Africa.
Draco fucking Malfoy.
Harry sighs and opens his eyes, runs a hand through his tangled hair.
But Draco is gone now.
He avoids looking at himself in the mirror as he pulls his ticket from the back pocket of his trousers. The word LONDON is written in bold, red ink, and it brings forth images of crowded rain-soaked streets and gum stains on the pavement and people, so many people in London, all in a hurry to get somewhere, to do something. Everyone has his or her own agendas and priorities there, and Harry wonders, when had his own changed from being the same as everyone else’s, from getting to work on time and doing the grocery shopping and preparing dinner before it got too late, and maybe meeting someone along the way, someone to spend his time with and make him happy? When had he stopped wanting that? When had his priorities evolved into something else?
Harry had thought he came here to find something, that somewhere within everywhere. He had thought that that was what he needed, that that would make him whole.
He had tried to save these people, save all of them with his money, and he likes to think that maybe he succeeded most of the time. But it was only money, only paper and ink and a little bit of metal, and it stuck together in the rain and was good for nothing. But happiness, or love, or whatever you wanted to call it, whatever was real salvation- that didn’t come from money, whether you were receiving it or giving it away.
Harry had thought that this was his sacrament. He had imagined something like security in numbers, the more he helped the better off he would be. That he would earn his own salvation by passing it out to others, to those in need, but he had done nothing to keep his from leaving in the middle of the night.
And so it left him here, alone in a men’s room in central Niger holding a single first class ticket to London, with nothing to call his except the empty rucksack on the counter and this ticket. He smells of unwashed tears and sweat and doesn’t even know how to rescue himself. He doesn’t know what will work. Because when he had tried to control it, tried to dictate where and to whom salvation went, it still hadn’t come, and when he had done nothing, it had walked away from him and left the sheets cold.
He tucks the returning ticket back into his pocket and walks out of the bathroom just as the old janitor is passing by out of the women’s restroom. He nods at Harry again, smiling, and his teeth are straight but not the perfect white they probably once were, and when he walks away it’s with a slight limp, and he reminds Harry so sharply of Remus then, gentle and kind and older now, more tattered, but so were all of them. Harry is overcome, and he checks his pockets for money, nothing there, and as he reaches for his shoe he suddenly remembers the stash in his pack. He pulls it out and goes after the man.
“Sir,” Harry calls out, hoping that he will speak some English. “Sir!”
The man stops and turns, looking concerned. He has a scar under his left eye shaped like a crescent moon.
Harry puts the money into the man’s hand and smiles at him, saying, “Here. Take this.”
The man looks at the money. He shakes his head and looks at Harry and tries to hand it back, but Harry won’t take it.
“I want you to have it,” Harry says, and his heart twists with sincerity.
But the man doesn’t take it. He firmly but gently seizes Harry’s wrist and pushes the money into the palm of his hand. There are calluses at the bottoms of his fingers and his joints. His skin is warm, and so is his smile as he shakes his head at Harry and motions to his cleaning supplies, as if to say, No, you see? I don’t need your handouts, I work; I earn my money, and I’m proud of that.
Harry folds his fingers closed around the money and nods shortly. The bills crumple in his hand.
The man walks off, steering his cart around Harry and holding his head high as he limps away, but he turns back briefly and waves, smiling. Harry finds himself smiling back. And he hasn’t saved this old man, hasn’t given him the money to quit this job and retire somewhere along the beach or on patch of land somewhere. Harry hasn’t given him anything, and yet-
Yet he feels like this man has given him something, that the warmth of the man’s smile and the gentleness of his hands have saved some small piece of Harry himself.
And Harry realizes that salvation is not a scale to be balanced, or a weighing of one deed against another, this versus that. It comes from the way you live, judges you by the decisions that you make from day to day, moment to moment, in the things that you do to make life tolerable, before there was no life left at all.
Harry knows he doesn’t have all of the answers. He may not even have any. And he may have lost a few.
But he knows that this is just a piece of something bigger, something greater, only the beginning of an end that he can’t be sure of but thinks-hopes- believes is the answer. And this searching, this blind gathering of small salvations such as this, is exhilarating, is better than discovering magic, better than anything else in the world that he can think of.
And in that moment he makes his choice.
He goes to the gift shop and buys a post card to send to Hermione, apologizing for missing his godson’s or goddaughter’s birth, and he dearly hopes that she will understand and he wants her to know that just because he isn’t there doesn’t mean that she’ll never hear from him or again, or that he doesn’t love her dearly. Then he buys a leaf of note writing paper, which is light blue with the word “Africa” watermarked across the middle in a large, tropical type, to write a letter to Remus, because he made a promise and doesn’t intend on breaking it. And he buys a clean shirt for himself, linen, cream, and it makes him smile when he passes his hand over the fabric.
And then he exchanges his London ticket for a one way to South America, which also makes him smile.
- -
Harry thinks, once, that this must be the only place in the world.
He tries to prove himself wrong by ascending to the top of the tallest sand dune he can find, but all he sees from there is more of the same nothingness, more of the same cloudless, white-blue sky and rolling desert. There, he can find no reason to believe that anything else might exist beyond where the sky meets the sand, no reason to remember that he is not the only person left in this world.
He tilts his head back to the sun and shuts his eyes and holds out his arms, and with his palms open to the sky and his throat tight with sudden emotion, he howls:
“IS THIS ALL?”
And there is no answer.
Finis
Final Note: While this is a fictional story borrowing characters from a series we all know and love, the economic, social and political problems that Harry and Draco encounter and try to solve are very, very real. If you would like to help, or are considering it, you can visit The World Vision website, or any of the many other trusted sites that accept donations for more information.