Harry/Draco, for Ronnie
Title: Whispers Of A Ewer To The River
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco (always a first time for everything...)
Rating: um, barely PG, I did try
A/N: From the israeli_slasher ICon challenge, for _bane who wanted Harry/Draco and a menorah. Sorry it took a bit, real life and whatnot... Ronnie dear, I've barely even read Harry/Draco before, much less written it, so I really hope that this is alright.
Set during the second war with a mostly redeemed!Draco (which I once swore never to touch with a ten foot pole but now find oddly interesting).
Disclaimer: ridiculously not mine. All JKR's.
__________________
He laughs quietly when Arthur and Lupin clap him on the back and praise him for being so focused through it all, frowns when he later hears the girls talking amongst themselves that he's too focused.
He's not entirely sure how one, the chosen one at that, might go about confessing that his mind is nothing but a muddy thicket of random information these days.
Freshly smuggled maps from Norway and an odd Egyptian jinx he's been having trouble with.
A scratchy coded memory, taken from someone long dead that Hermione, despite her best efforts, still cannot decipher.
Choppy quotes from scriptures regaling tales of the most ancient dark arts floating through his mind; twisting and clawing angrily at each other.
The Cretan Minotaur born of jealousy and hurt.
The Hebrew Golem made of earth and desperation and dark madness.
He thinks of the muggle born wizard returning home to his family in Jerusalem as a biblical dawn steadily rose only to find them murdered and rotting in the Mediterranean sun.
Of that same wizard years later in a rebuilt temple that would never smell of the old one with no tears running down his cheeks.
Of the flick of his wrist and wand every night for seven nights and the branched candelabrum burning seven days more than it ought to have, the faces of the believing masses that awoke each morning to find it burning still.
Just a pitiable trick of magic Harry thinks to himself, not wholly unlike a muggle card trick.
A choice one makes, a choice to believe.
Men and wizards, like any surviving river, search for the smoothest course, wherever hope of something or of anything is suggested, even without attestation.
And this lie he thinks of now, himself, such as it were, was it not just a trick of a different stripe when it came down to it really?
A complex trick of cards, but a trick all the same.
He thinks of people following a lie to rebellion and war.
To death.
Thinks of Draco's chapped lips and frozen fingers.
Thinks of Draco who refuses to believe the lie so much that he believes it more than anyone.
Believes in him.
He thinks of Draco's skin sliding against his in the utter silence of his bedroom in Godric's Hollow. Of thin ice still crystallized over eyes he just now thinks he might see for real one day, of uncomfortably warm lips and the way Draco holds his breath in the impossible moments before he finally comes; messy and heated on Harry's stomach.
They sleep with only their shoulders touching, but touching all the same and Harry thinks again of that Hebrew wizard slipping between the shadows of the temple pillars at night to mutter a refilling charm at the cracked oil ewer.
Perhaps doing it, or so Harry likes to believe, chooses to believe, without knowing why.
Maybe once he got to thinking about the why the oil stopped refilling. Maybe by then they could keep it burning themselves.
Is an illusion not just as good as something real if it's put together properly on the outside?
Come dawn did the broken women and men of Jerusalem not find the wicks still burning?
A liar's flame but did it not provide light all the same?
Come dawn will the broken women and men of the Order not still find Harry with that white-hot fervor in his eyes?
He sits alone as always and watches them arrive in twos and threes, pour themselves tea or coffee or something stronger and waiting for the rest. They seem to start earlier with every day that passes he thinks.
Draco still in bed upstairs until darkness will fall and then there is work of his own to tend to, the swishing fabric of his cloak and a soft creak of the back door his only goodbyes.
Brave enough to lose an entire family by his own choosing but still not quite brave enough for this.
Harry outlines their work for the day with a firm voice, watches Neville stand that much taller against the kitchen doorway and a hardly noticeable bit of color spread across Ginny's cheeks, and hopes with a liars hope that Draco doesn't get to thinking about the why just yet.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing: Harry/Draco (always a first time for everything...)
Rating: um, barely PG, I did try
A/N: From the israeli_slasher ICon challenge, for _bane who wanted Harry/Draco and a menorah. Sorry it took a bit, real life and whatnot... Ronnie dear, I've barely even read Harry/Draco before, much less written it, so I really hope that this is alright.
Set during the second war with a mostly redeemed!Draco (which I once swore never to touch with a ten foot pole but now find oddly interesting).
Disclaimer: ridiculously not mine. All JKR's.
__________________
He laughs quietly when Arthur and Lupin clap him on the back and praise him for being so focused through it all, frowns when he later hears the girls talking amongst themselves that he's too focused.
He's not entirely sure how one, the chosen one at that, might go about confessing that his mind is nothing but a muddy thicket of random information these days.
Freshly smuggled maps from Norway and an odd Egyptian jinx he's been having trouble with.
A scratchy coded memory, taken from someone long dead that Hermione, despite her best efforts, still cannot decipher.
Choppy quotes from scriptures regaling tales of the most ancient dark arts floating through his mind; twisting and clawing angrily at each other.
The Cretan Minotaur born of jealousy and hurt.
The Hebrew Golem made of earth and desperation and dark madness.
He thinks of the muggle born wizard returning home to his family in Jerusalem as a biblical dawn steadily rose only to find them murdered and rotting in the Mediterranean sun.
Of that same wizard years later in a rebuilt temple that would never smell of the old one with no tears running down his cheeks.
Of the flick of his wrist and wand every night for seven nights and the branched candelabrum burning seven days more than it ought to have, the faces of the believing masses that awoke each morning to find it burning still.
Just a pitiable trick of magic Harry thinks to himself, not wholly unlike a muggle card trick.
A choice one makes, a choice to believe.
Men and wizards, like any surviving river, search for the smoothest course, wherever hope of something or of anything is suggested, even without attestation.
And this lie he thinks of now, himself, such as it were, was it not just a trick of a different stripe when it came down to it really?
A complex trick of cards, but a trick all the same.
He thinks of people following a lie to rebellion and war.
To death.
Thinks of Draco's chapped lips and frozen fingers.
Thinks of Draco who refuses to believe the lie so much that he believes it more than anyone.
Believes in him.
He thinks of Draco's skin sliding against his in the utter silence of his bedroom in Godric's Hollow. Of thin ice still crystallized over eyes he just now thinks he might see for real one day, of uncomfortably warm lips and the way Draco holds his breath in the impossible moments before he finally comes; messy and heated on Harry's stomach.
They sleep with only their shoulders touching, but touching all the same and Harry thinks again of that Hebrew wizard slipping between the shadows of the temple pillars at night to mutter a refilling charm at the cracked oil ewer.
Perhaps doing it, or so Harry likes to believe, chooses to believe, without knowing why.
Maybe once he got to thinking about the why the oil stopped refilling. Maybe by then they could keep it burning themselves.
Is an illusion not just as good as something real if it's put together properly on the outside?
Come dawn did the broken women and men of Jerusalem not find the wicks still burning?
A liar's flame but did it not provide light all the same?
Come dawn will the broken women and men of the Order not still find Harry with that white-hot fervor in his eyes?
He sits alone as always and watches them arrive in twos and threes, pour themselves tea or coffee or something stronger and waiting for the rest. They seem to start earlier with every day that passes he thinks.
Draco still in bed upstairs until darkness will fall and then there is work of his own to tend to, the swishing fabric of his cloak and a soft creak of the back door his only goodbyes.
Brave enough to lose an entire family by his own choosing but still not quite brave enough for this.
Harry outlines their work for the day with a firm voice, watches Neville stand that much taller against the kitchen doorway and a hardly noticeable bit of color spread across Ginny's cheeks, and hopes with a liars hope that Draco doesn't get to thinking about the why just yet.