Fic: Coins of Happiness (HP, H/D, R)
Title: Coins of Happiness
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco (secondary Harry/Hermione, Draco/unknown)
Rated: R
Warnings: Slash, angst, STD, implied character death
Words: 5,200
Notes: Quote prompt #215 at the_dark_garden.// Again with the no beta because they are all otherwise occupied. Will Xpost later.// No, I don't write that fast, if you're wondering. This is something that I started over three months ago and didn't touch until about a week ago. Then I got inspired to keep going on it and was working on this at the same time as I was working on the fic I posted yesterday. I just finished it today, and I know some people may not like it, but I'm actually very proud of it.
Summary: "I know the end now. It goes like this..."
"I know the end now. It goes like this..."
~Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)~
Coins of Happiness
It happened in November. Draco remembers it vividly.
It was raining that night, he was bored and lonely and a little drunk. A pretty man in a pub bought him a drink and Draco let himself get picked up.
Somewhere between the first kiss and the last stroke, Draco realized that his pretty young lover was a Muggle.
He left without a word and stubbornly put it out of his mind.
~~*~~
Day 1,097
8:00 a.m.
Draco sits by the window in the living room with a leaf of parchment unrolled in his hands and Sebastian in his lap, purring contentedly. He has read Hermione Granger's letter already, but he reads it again, hoping the words, and the request implied in them, make more sense to him the second time.
They don't.
~~*~~
He didn't know that he was diseased until February. He didn't start believing it until the first spot appeared on the back of his hand.
Draco went to Severus Snape and demanded he fix it, but for the first time in as long as Draco could remember, the potions master refused him. Not because he wouldn't do it, but because he couldn't. There was no cure. Treatment that would prolong his life, but no cure.
Draco went home and tried to remember all the people he'd fucked between November and the middle of February. He made a list and called those whose phone numbers he knew.
There were many names but not many phone numbers.
Sometimes this bothers him but usually he doesn't think about it.
~~*~~
10:17 a.m.
Draco folds up his responding letter, seals it, and summons a house elf to post it.
Doing this has tired him, so he lays down on the couch in his study and goes to sleep. Sebastian hops onto his stomach, curls up, and begins cleaning his paws.
~~*~~
Magic was the first thing the virus took, and Draco cursed it violently, then curled up on his bed and wept for three days.
The house elves whispered that their master wept as though his heart were breaking, and indeed, it was very much like that. He had not cried so since the day he walked out on Harry Potter.
And just like he had done then, after three days, he got up and started living again.
It took him a while to figure out how to get things down from the highest shelves without using a hover charm, and he had to call a house elf to help him with all of the doors that had been locked or booby-trapped with spells, and eventually, he had to leave his family home because it was downright dangerous to live there if you were a Muggle or a Squib.
Squib.
He cursed and raged when that word first appeared in his head. He was Draco fucking Malfoy, he was not a Squib.
Except he was. He hadn't been born that way, no, but he had been made that way. And that was the cruelest thing about his illness. He was a wizard, he lived by magic, it was in his very blood. He knew exactly what he had lost and he missed it.
It was instinctive to him to say accio when he wanted something, and now he had to send a house elf or go and get it himself. This led Draco to the discovery that he was a fairly absent-minded person when it came to his possessions.
For the first time in his life, he lost his car keys.
~~*~~
1:23 p.m.
“Master Draco?”
Draco opens one eye and peers at his house elf. Gabby. The thing's name is Gabby. What a stupid name.
Sebastian yawns and stretches his arms out, claws flexing out an inch from Draco's nose. Draco pets him absently.
“What?” Draco asks Gabby.
“Miss Hermione Granger is here, sir,” the house elf says, looking suitably impressed.
Draco closes his eye and settles back down. “I told her no,” he says. “Make her go away.”
“But sir, she--”
“Go!”
The elf bows and leaves the room.
Draco yawns and goes back to sleep.
~~*~~
Draco's sex life, such as it had been, was the second thing to go close on the heels of the first. He wasn't an absolute bastard and he wasn't going to curse anyone else with this sickness just so he could get off.
Which he supposed made him more honourable than the fucking tramp who infected him.
Harry would have been so proud.
~~*~~
1:35 p.m.
“Master Draco?”
“What?” Draco grumbles.
“Miss Hermione Granger says she will be back tomorrow, sir.”
“I hope she likes the foyer then,” Draco says.
~~*~~
Snape brewed him a potion. A 'treatment' that would ease his pain, heal his sores, and prolong his life.
Draco cursed and raged and threw things.
But he took the potion. He took the potion and he started counting the days and measuring time in 'before' and 'after'.
~~*~~
Day 1,104
12:47 p.m.
“Get out of my way, you worthless little insectile sycophant.”
Draco opens his eyes lazily and regards Hermione with cool disinterest. “That's not very politically correct of you, Granger,” he says. He strokes Sebastian's back, smiling when the cat arches his spine into his fingers, then he sits up. “Took you long enough.”
Hermione stares at him and blinks. “You... You did that on purpose,” she says. “You intentionally made me wait out there in your damned foyer just to see how long it would take me to force my way past your house elves. Of all the petty--”
Draco snorts in amusement. “You are here to ask me for marital advice,” he says. “You tell me who's being more petty. Minister.”
~~*~~
In August--the August before, not the August after--Hermione Granger, the Minister of Magic, began her campaign to merge the wizarding world and the Muggle world into one.
In the aftermath of war, a war that had devastated both races, it made sense that they band together to rebuild and heal, she said. It made no sense to continue as they had been and it seemed like racism and prejudice, which was Voldemort's credo and would not be hers.
She called it 'desegregation'.
Draco thought it was a sick joke the first time he heard it. Harry had come home to their flat with the news and Draco had laughed until he shook.
He stopped laughing when he realized that it was not a joke. He put a large chunk of his fortune toward those who actively protested and defied the idea, and though he did not often speak in public anymore--not since shortly after the war ended--he broke his silence for that.
He might have stayed quiet and saved his money for all that anyone seemed to hear him or give a shit.
By the August after, Hermione Granger, the Minister of Magic, would be married to Harry Potter.
~~*~~
12:50 p.m.
“Your life and your circumstances are no fault of mine, Malfoy,” Hermione says coldly.
She is fairly looking down her nose at him and he has to laugh at that.
“Aren't they?” he says. She narrows her eyes at him and he waves it away. “It doesn't matter, Granger. I'm dying and that's the end of it. Thanks to Severus' wonder potion, I don't look like it, but I am. My pure, wizard's blood is poisoning me from the inside out and I have no time for this dance. Have a seat. You have questions for me, so ask them.”
He watches her gingerly sit down in the chair across from the sofa where he's sitting. She is wearing robes, but then everyone wears robes now. Even the Muggles. It's become fashionable, like carrying a wand behind your ear or sticking out of your pocket is fashionable. Like the serpent-tongued skull mark on Draco's arm is fashionable and subject to mimicry from every tattoo artist the world over, each more elaborate than the last.
Magic being so 'trendy' is how Draco ended up in a strange bed with a strange man that November. He played at not being a Muggle because it was the fashion and he was much, much better at the game than most and Draco was a little drunk.
“You're going to die alone,” Hermione says softly. She smooths a crease out of the skirt of her robes and folds her hands in her lap.
Draco watches her and remembers the buck-toothed, bushy-haired Mudblood girl from Hogwarts that he used to taunt. In his mind, he tries to place that image over the one of her sitting there in his chair on the other side of his coffee table.
He sits back and Sebastian flops down on the cushion beside him, purring. “Perhaps,” Draco says, lifting a brow at her, his hand falling to idly caress his cat's fur. “Does that please you, Granger?”
“No, I--”
Draco scoffs and looks away from her, over her shoulder. “Don't look like that,” he murmurs. “Don't bother. I know that it pleases you and I don't have time for your lies. My own, but not yours.” He drops his silver eyes to hers again and meets her gaze directly. “Don't worry about it, Granger. It would please me if I were you.”
Hermione lowers her eyes a little shamefully to her hands in her lap and watches her fingers as she twists them together. “I want... Harry still loves you,” she says, voice barely a whisper.
And there is shame in that too, Draco sees it. Shame that her husband of three years is still in love with his disease infected ex-lover.
“I know,” Draco says. And that's all. He doesn't need to say more.
Hermione lifts her eyes to stare at him and her expression is miserable. “Why?”
Draco smiles, amused and sad all at once. “Is it so difficult to imagine, Granger? That the great Harry Potter could love me?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Ah, honesty from you at last,” Draco says. “How refreshing.”
“Malfoy... do you have to be such a bastard?”
“Granger, you are in my home against my express wishes demanding answers about a part of my life that I consider to be very private and further, none of your business. And what's more, you want me to help you keep your husband. Your husband who is still in love with me.” He pauses and quirks a brow at her. “I think you can forgive me if I'm not exactly pleased with the situation.”
“Fine,” Hermione snaps. “Fine, but I want answers. I deserve answers, Malfoy.”
“Yes, because my how you have suffered,” Draco says dryly.
“Fuck you, Malfoy,” Hermione says, voice cracking in her anger.
“Oh, Granger, I really wouldn't advise that,” Draco says, eyes glinting with malice.
“I hate you,” Hermione says fiercely, and there are tears in her eyes.
“I know,” Draco says, his tone almost kind. “I hate you too.”
~~*~~
Harry argued with him about it. He didn't understand why it was such a horrible idea and Draco, much as he tried, couldn't explain it to him. Harry was as pure-blooded as he was and yet they were from vastly different worlds.
Draco was an elitist, a racist, a snob, and a purist.
Harry was naive and ignorant.
They shouted at each other and Draco threw a book at Harry's head.
They ended the argument on the floor with violent sex. Laying there with their mingled sweat cooling on their skin and their breath coming fast and laboured around pounding hearts, they ultimately decided to agree to disagree.
~~*~~
1:43 p.m.
“What you really want to know is how to make him love you,” Draco says after a few minutes of silence. “Isn't it?”
“Yes,” Hermione says. “Yes, I... Oh god, I love him so much. I can't stand this.”
“It's not that difficult,” Draco says with a shrug. “It's quite simple, really. Give him what he wants.”
Hermione laughs around a sob and rubs her eyes with the thumb and finger of one perfectly manicured hand. “And what is that? You know so much, tell me what Harry wants.”
“Harry wants what he's always wanted,” Draco says. His hand stills on Sebastian's back and his expression becomes remote. “Harry wants what he's always wanted, what he's never had, the one thing that I... could never give him.”
“Wouldn't,” Hermione corrects him.
It's not said unkindly but Draco tenses just the same. “Have it your way,” he says. “Wouldn't.”
“A family,” Hermione says.
“Yes.” Draco's fingers go back to stroking the cat's back. “Give him that, and he'll stay. He'll love you and it will never again cross his mind to wander from your bed.”
“He's never--”
“He has,” Draco says with calm certainty. “He has and some part of you knows it or you wouldn't be here asking me to teach you how to make him love you.”
Her eyes fixed on her own lap, Hermione nods. “But what if... what if it's not enough?”
“It will be,” Draco assures her.
“I mean for me,” Hermione clarifies. “What if being a mother and a wife and... and giving him a family... What if it's not enough?”
Draco blinks at her incredulously. “What else could you want from him?”
Hermione lifts her hands and lets them drop helplessly. “I don't know, Malfoy,” she says with a bitter laugh. She still isn't looking at him and Draco wonders if part of her is afraid to. “Passion? Desire? Love that doesn't come with conditions? I want him to love me like he... like he loves you,” she confesses.
“Well too fucking bad, Granger,” Draco snaps, sitting forward and glaring with eyes that are narrow slits of grey at her bowed head. “That is mine. That is mine and I will take it with me to the grave. I wouldn't give it to you even if I could.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” Hermione whispers.
“Why do you care?” Draco says. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Because, Granger, you took everything. Well intentioned or not, you took everything. Am I supposed to love you for it? Be grateful? There are reasons why we didn't live among Muggles. You think it was just because we saw them as inferior, or because we didn't understand. That's part of it, but the other part is because it was not safe. But it's done now, isn't it? And you have your infernal desegregation. I wish you joy of it.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Hermione staring down at her hands in her lap and saying nothing, taking deep breaths and trying not to let the tears gathering in her lashes fall, Draco stroking Sebastian's fur and thinking about getting up to pour himself a drink just to have something to do.
Hermione breaks the silence. “Why...?” Her voice cracks. She licks her lips and tries again. “Why wouldn't you?”
“Why wouldn't I what?” Draco says, sure that he already knows exactly what.
“Give him a family,” Hermione says, her voice a shamed whisper. “Why... if you love him, why wouldn't you?”
~~*~~
“It would be permanent,” Draco said.
Snape nodded and said nothing, watching Draco's face with beetle-black eyes, waiting, the vial of potion held loosely in his hand.
The potion was something like Pollyjuice Potion, except it was nothing like that at all. It didn't transform the drinker into someone else, it changed their sex, their gender, their appearance... everything. Men were not meant to bear children, that was the right of women. It was their power and it went against nature to change that. Something Snape had concluded after years of testing and brewing and discarding. So he couldn't help Draco, a male, have a child, but he could make Draco female and thereby give him that power. That was how the potion worked. And its effects were lasting. It was really a very brilliant invention, and one Snape was rather proud of.
Draco massaged his temple with shaking fingers and stared at the vial. The potion inside it would change his life in a thousand ways, many of which he could not anticipate. But it would make it possible for him to have children, Harry's children. Children with hair like a burst of coal powder and eyes like mercury rolling in the palm of his hand. Warm skin and innocence. Laughter and lazy Sundays. A family.
“I've never thought of myself as female, you know,” Draco said dully.
Snape shrugged. “You will,” he said, and offered the potion.
Draco looked at his hand, the red liquid in the vial, and swallowed the lump forming in his throat.
Harry wouldn't leave him if he didn't take it. He didn't even know what Draco was doing. Tea with a friend, Draco had told him, and Harry had believed him. But Harry desperately wanted a family, more than anything, and Draco could see it. Every time he looked at a mother or father with a child, he could see it there. That want like a physical touch.
Draco reached out and snatched the vial of potion from Snape's hand before he could change his mind. He lifted it before his eyes, shining like a garnet in the dank light of the Hogwarts dungeon, then put it away in his pocket. He inclined his head to Snape, thanking him, then slipped out, striding by curiously gaping students and up the stairs.
~~*~~
2:35 p.m.
“That is not your business, Granger,” Draco says. He stands up and gives her a pointed look. “And I think I'm done talking to you. I'd like for you to leave now.”
Hermione nods and gets shakily to her feet. She pauses in the entry way and looks back at him. “I'm sorry, Malfoy.”
“And don't come back,” Draco says.
“All right. And... and thank you.”
“Get out!”
~~*~~
Day 1,111
6:14 p.m.
Draco is on the balcony, sitting on a chaise lounge with a tumbler in his hand and a bottle on the little table by his arm. Two house elves take turns cranking the old phonograph that is playing Beethoven. He has his eyes closed and he hums softly under his breath to the music.
Beside him on the couch is a copy of the Daily Prophet, the first page of which is devoted to Harry Potter and Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger-Potter's divorce announcement. Complete with gossip and speculation and, thankfully, not one single mention of Draco's name.
The sun has just begun to set, a fading of the light that will soon become streaks of amber and crimson.
On the table beside the bottle of whiskey is a vial of potion. It's blue and the taste is vaguely reminiscent of well-deserved hang-overs and toilet bowl water.
The record on the phonograph finishes and one of the elves changes it to something else. Still Beethoven. Für Elise.
~~*~~
They went to Venice the summer before. They acted just like lovers on holiday, which they were, Harry pointed out when Draco mentioned it.
They watched a glass-blower make a sculpture of twisted, sensual, burning colours. It took most of the day and Harry tried several times to drag Draco away, but he refused and when the artist was done, he bought the thing.
“What for?” Harry asked, laughing. He was, of course, the one required to carry the damn thing.
“Because I wanted it,” Draco said simply. “Because it's beautiful and I watched it happen and really, Potter, you have no appreciation for art.”
“Call it what you want. It looks like a dying peacock to me,” Harry said.
“My point exactly,” Draco said dryly.
Venice in the summer was hot and crowded and sticky, but neither of them noticed or cared. They had a hotel room with a balcony that looked out onto the Grand Canal and sometimes in the evening, there were fireworks.
They listened to Für Elise played on crystal water goblets.
Harry fucked him on an oriental silk rug in the middle of their room and after, Draco lay there watching him through half-closed eyes and murmured poetry in his ear.
“If there were a place we didn't know of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here--the bold
exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders
that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning
just on each other, trembling--and could master all this,
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable, soundless dead;
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up,
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?”*
“That's nice,” Harry whispered. He trailed his hand down Draco's back, fingers lingering on the little grooves of his spine.
Draco opened his eyes and blinked slowly back at him, his long, pale lashes catching the flickering light from the candles Harry had lit earlier. He stared at Harry stretched out there beside him, hair more tangled than usual from Draco's fingers, skin beaded with sweat that looked like glitter in the candlelight.
His expression became sad for an instant. “It is,” he agreed and closed his eyes again with a sigh.
“Draco?” Harry said, frowning a little.
“Hmm?”
Harry hesitated, his hand stilling on Draco's back for a moment. “Nothing,” he said eventually.
~~*~~
6:57 p.m.
“Master Draco must take his potion now.”
Draco is half dozing and he pulls himself back reluctantly and glares at his house elf. Gabby.
“Stupid name,” he mutters.
“Master Draco?”
Draco nods and takes the vial from the table. He takes the little bit of cork out of the top and holds it up, peering at the vibrant blue colour. His eyes go blank and far away.
Very slowly, deliberately, he turns the vial up and spills the potion on the floor. It makes a clear pattering sound on the stone and a little sky blue puddle between his feet.
Draco tosses the glass vial away and it hits the side of the ledge around the balcony and shatters with a sound like little silver bells.
“Clean that up,” Draco says, tilting his head back on the back of the lounge and closing his eyes again. Seeking Venice. Rilke and candlelight.
Gabby nods and disappears with a pop to go find the broom and mop.
~~*~~
There should have been something that triggered it. Such a thing, such a world altering, life shifting thing deserved a catalyst of some sort at the very least, Draco would think later.
“I can't do this anymore,” Draco said as he walked out of the bathroom. He'd just poured the red potion that Snape had given him down the drain in the bathroom sink.
He would think later, with regret, that his hands should have been shaking.
Harry was reading the Daily Prophet with a scowl on his face and he looked up when Draco spoke and his expression didn't change for a moment because he was still thinking about whatever it was he had been reading. He took in the way Draco was standing, stiffly and exceptionally still, the way his eyes looked cold and remote, and he put the paper down.
“Can't do what anymore?” Harry asked cautiously.
“This,” Draco said simply. “All of this.”
At the time, Draco was grateful that Harry didn't try to stop him from leaving. It was only later that he would wonder why.
~~*~~
Day 1,118
The last day...
1:15 p.m.
Draco listens to the sound of footsteps on the floor and opens his eyes. Harry is standing there in the doorway looking in at him, his green eyes intense and searching.
“Master Draco, Master Harry wishes to see you, sir.”
Draco smiles a little and shifts his eyes to his house elf. “I can see that, Gabby, thank you.”
The elf bows smartly and leaves them alone.
“Hello, Harry,” Draco says.
Harry lets out a shuddering breath and comes into the room. “You look like shit, Draco,” he says, and falls into the chair beside the bed.
“Thanks so much,” Draco says, voice cracking and faint. “You always were the most charming person.”
Harry nods like Draco has said something profound, then rakes his hand through his hair and looks him directly in the eyes, his expression miserable and haunted. “I'm sorry,” he says.
Draco lifts a brow at him. “For what?”
“For not fighting for you,” Harry says. “For not fighting to keep you.”
Draco is quiet for a minute, just looking at him. He hasn't seen Harry up closer than the width of an empty room in over three years. He's still beautiful, but the time has not been good to him. He looks weary and drawn, dark circles from lack of sleep stain the thin skin around his eyes and he doesn't look like he's smiled in a long time.
Sebastian hops up on the bed and nudges one of Draco's hands.
“Why didn't you fight for me?” Draco asks.
Harry lifts one hand in a helpless gesture and drops it. “Because you didn't want me to.”
“Can't becomes the answer to everything, because there are no other answers,” Draco says, speaking so softly that he doubts Harry can hear him anyway. It's something his disease has taught him.
Harry does hear it, though, and he nods like he knows exactly what Draco means. Perhaps he does. Draco considers it and thinks that he probably does.
“Hermione came to see you,” Harry says abruptly.
“Yes, she did,” Draco says. “I told her what she wanted to know. I guess she didn't like what she heard.”
Harry frowns at him and sits forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “She wants to have children now,” Harry says. “I told her no. Then I walked out.”
It's said simply, but there is the honesty of confession in it and Draco looks at him for a moment like he's lost his mind. “Why?”
“Why did you stop taking your potion?” Harry asks instead of answering him. He asks it like it is his answer.
Draco looks away from him, out the window. When he shifts his gaze back, his eyes are blank and distant.
“Draco, don't do that,” Harry whispers, a note of pleading in his voice. “Don't.”
Draco closes his eyes and breathes deeply a few times. When he opens them again, the blankness is gone and Harry relaxes.
“You should do it,” Draco says. “Make children. Have a family. Be happy.”
Harry laughs and shakes his head. It is a sound entirely devoid of humour. It makes Draco a little sad to hear it.
“Fool,” Harry whispers.
Draco shrugs, then hisses out a breath as pain shoots up his side. He closes his eyes for a few minutes, taking deep breaths until it stops. When he opens them again, Sebastian is in Harry's lap purring, and some time has passed because the shadows on the wall have shifted.
“Harry?”
“What?”
“Stay?”
Harry lifts a brow at him and moves a little in his chair, settling. He strokes the cat's back with fingers that want to reach out and smooth the pale hair back from Draco's face, but don't quite dare. “You know I will,” he says.
“I don't want you to... see me like this but...” Hermione's words about him dying alone echo in his mind and frighten him now like they didn't then. “I hate you seeing me like this, but I don't want to die alone,” he confesses.
“I've seen you every other way, why should this be any different?” Harry murmurs.
“Okay,” Draco says. And that's all.
Harry stays and watches him as he drifts in and out of consciousness and finally falls asleep. He dozes himself for a little while, waking when the even pattern of Draco's breathing falters.
He gets up and moves to sit on the edge of the bed beside Draco. Draco cracks his eyes open, the white gold fans of his lashes fluttering tiredly. Harry brushes the hair that's fallen into his face back and Draco instinctively moves his face into the warmth of his hand.
“If there were a place we didn't know of,” Harry says softly, “and there, on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed what they could never bring to mastery here...”
“That's nice,” Draco says, voice very faint and slurring.
“It is,” Harry agrees as he settles down on the bed beside him.
//finis//
A/N: *An excerpt from the “Duino Elegies” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.
Fandom: Harry Potter
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco (secondary Harry/Hermione, Draco/unknown)
Rated: R
Warnings: Slash, angst, STD, implied character death
Words: 5,200
Notes: Quote prompt #215 at the_dark_garden.// Again with the no beta because they are all otherwise occupied. Will Xpost later.// No, I don't write that fast, if you're wondering. This is something that I started over three months ago and didn't touch until about a week ago. Then I got inspired to keep going on it and was working on this at the same time as I was working on the fic I posted yesterday. I just finished it today, and I know some people may not like it, but I'm actually very proud of it.
Summary: "I know the end now. It goes like this..."
"I know the end now. It goes like this..."
~Audrey Niffenegger (The Time Traveler's Wife)~
Coins of Happiness
It happened in November. Draco remembers it vividly.
It was raining that night, he was bored and lonely and a little drunk. A pretty man in a pub bought him a drink and Draco let himself get picked up.
Somewhere between the first kiss and the last stroke, Draco realized that his pretty young lover was a Muggle.
He left without a word and stubbornly put it out of his mind.
~~*~~
Day 1,097
8:00 a.m.
Draco sits by the window in the living room with a leaf of parchment unrolled in his hands and Sebastian in his lap, purring contentedly. He has read Hermione Granger's letter already, but he reads it again, hoping the words, and the request implied in them, make more sense to him the second time.
They don't.
~~*~~
He didn't know that he was diseased until February. He didn't start believing it until the first spot appeared on the back of his hand.
Draco went to Severus Snape and demanded he fix it, but for the first time in as long as Draco could remember, the potions master refused him. Not because he wouldn't do it, but because he couldn't. There was no cure. Treatment that would prolong his life, but no cure.
Draco went home and tried to remember all the people he'd fucked between November and the middle of February. He made a list and called those whose phone numbers he knew.
There were many names but not many phone numbers.
Sometimes this bothers him but usually he doesn't think about it.
~~*~~
10:17 a.m.
Draco folds up his responding letter, seals it, and summons a house elf to post it.
Doing this has tired him, so he lays down on the couch in his study and goes to sleep. Sebastian hops onto his stomach, curls up, and begins cleaning his paws.
~~*~~
Magic was the first thing the virus took, and Draco cursed it violently, then curled up on his bed and wept for three days.
The house elves whispered that their master wept as though his heart were breaking, and indeed, it was very much like that. He had not cried so since the day he walked out on Harry Potter.
And just like he had done then, after three days, he got up and started living again.
It took him a while to figure out how to get things down from the highest shelves without using a hover charm, and he had to call a house elf to help him with all of the doors that had been locked or booby-trapped with spells, and eventually, he had to leave his family home because it was downright dangerous to live there if you were a Muggle or a Squib.
Squib.
He cursed and raged when that word first appeared in his head. He was Draco fucking Malfoy, he was not a Squib.
Except he was. He hadn't been born that way, no, but he had been made that way. And that was the cruelest thing about his illness. He was a wizard, he lived by magic, it was in his very blood. He knew exactly what he had lost and he missed it.
It was instinctive to him to say accio when he wanted something, and now he had to send a house elf or go and get it himself. This led Draco to the discovery that he was a fairly absent-minded person when it came to his possessions.
For the first time in his life, he lost his car keys.
~~*~~
1:23 p.m.
“Master Draco?”
Draco opens one eye and peers at his house elf. Gabby. The thing's name is Gabby. What a stupid name.
Sebastian yawns and stretches his arms out, claws flexing out an inch from Draco's nose. Draco pets him absently.
“What?” Draco asks Gabby.
“Miss Hermione Granger is here, sir,” the house elf says, looking suitably impressed.
Draco closes his eye and settles back down. “I told her no,” he says. “Make her go away.”
“But sir, she--”
“Go!”
The elf bows and leaves the room.
Draco yawns and goes back to sleep.
~~*~~
Draco's sex life, such as it had been, was the second thing to go close on the heels of the first. He wasn't an absolute bastard and he wasn't going to curse anyone else with this sickness just so he could get off.
Which he supposed made him more honourable than the fucking tramp who infected him.
Harry would have been so proud.
~~*~~
1:35 p.m.
“Master Draco?”
“What?” Draco grumbles.
“Miss Hermione Granger says she will be back tomorrow, sir.”
“I hope she likes the foyer then,” Draco says.
~~*~~
Snape brewed him a potion. A 'treatment' that would ease his pain, heal his sores, and prolong his life.
Draco cursed and raged and threw things.
But he took the potion. He took the potion and he started counting the days and measuring time in 'before' and 'after'.
~~*~~
Day 1,104
12:47 p.m.
“Get out of my way, you worthless little insectile sycophant.”
Draco opens his eyes lazily and regards Hermione with cool disinterest. “That's not very politically correct of you, Granger,” he says. He strokes Sebastian's back, smiling when the cat arches his spine into his fingers, then he sits up. “Took you long enough.”
Hermione stares at him and blinks. “You... You did that on purpose,” she says. “You intentionally made me wait out there in your damned foyer just to see how long it would take me to force my way past your house elves. Of all the petty--”
Draco snorts in amusement. “You are here to ask me for marital advice,” he says. “You tell me who's being more petty. Minister.”
~~*~~
In August--the August before, not the August after--Hermione Granger, the Minister of Magic, began her campaign to merge the wizarding world and the Muggle world into one.
In the aftermath of war, a war that had devastated both races, it made sense that they band together to rebuild and heal, she said. It made no sense to continue as they had been and it seemed like racism and prejudice, which was Voldemort's credo and would not be hers.
She called it 'desegregation'.
Draco thought it was a sick joke the first time he heard it. Harry had come home to their flat with the news and Draco had laughed until he shook.
He stopped laughing when he realized that it was not a joke. He put a large chunk of his fortune toward those who actively protested and defied the idea, and though he did not often speak in public anymore--not since shortly after the war ended--he broke his silence for that.
He might have stayed quiet and saved his money for all that anyone seemed to hear him or give a shit.
By the August after, Hermione Granger, the Minister of Magic, would be married to Harry Potter.
~~*~~
12:50 p.m.
“Your life and your circumstances are no fault of mine, Malfoy,” Hermione says coldly.
She is fairly looking down her nose at him and he has to laugh at that.
“Aren't they?” he says. She narrows her eyes at him and he waves it away. “It doesn't matter, Granger. I'm dying and that's the end of it. Thanks to Severus' wonder potion, I don't look like it, but I am. My pure, wizard's blood is poisoning me from the inside out and I have no time for this dance. Have a seat. You have questions for me, so ask them.”
He watches her gingerly sit down in the chair across from the sofa where he's sitting. She is wearing robes, but then everyone wears robes now. Even the Muggles. It's become fashionable, like carrying a wand behind your ear or sticking out of your pocket is fashionable. Like the serpent-tongued skull mark on Draco's arm is fashionable and subject to mimicry from every tattoo artist the world over, each more elaborate than the last.
Magic being so 'trendy' is how Draco ended up in a strange bed with a strange man that November. He played at not being a Muggle because it was the fashion and he was much, much better at the game than most and Draco was a little drunk.
“You're going to die alone,” Hermione says softly. She smooths a crease out of the skirt of her robes and folds her hands in her lap.
Draco watches her and remembers the buck-toothed, bushy-haired Mudblood girl from Hogwarts that he used to taunt. In his mind, he tries to place that image over the one of her sitting there in his chair on the other side of his coffee table.
He sits back and Sebastian flops down on the cushion beside him, purring. “Perhaps,” Draco says, lifting a brow at her, his hand falling to idly caress his cat's fur. “Does that please you, Granger?”
“No, I--”
Draco scoffs and looks away from her, over her shoulder. “Don't look like that,” he murmurs. “Don't bother. I know that it pleases you and I don't have time for your lies. My own, but not yours.” He drops his silver eyes to hers again and meets her gaze directly. “Don't worry about it, Granger. It would please me if I were you.”
Hermione lowers her eyes a little shamefully to her hands in her lap and watches her fingers as she twists them together. “I want... Harry still loves you,” she says, voice barely a whisper.
And there is shame in that too, Draco sees it. Shame that her husband of three years is still in love with his disease infected ex-lover.
“I know,” Draco says. And that's all. He doesn't need to say more.
Hermione lifts her eyes to stare at him and her expression is miserable. “Why?”
Draco smiles, amused and sad all at once. “Is it so difficult to imagine, Granger? That the great Harry Potter could love me?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Ah, honesty from you at last,” Draco says. “How refreshing.”
“Malfoy... do you have to be such a bastard?”
“Granger, you are in my home against my express wishes demanding answers about a part of my life that I consider to be very private and further, none of your business. And what's more, you want me to help you keep your husband. Your husband who is still in love with me.” He pauses and quirks a brow at her. “I think you can forgive me if I'm not exactly pleased with the situation.”
“Fine,” Hermione snaps. “Fine, but I want answers. I deserve answers, Malfoy.”
“Yes, because my how you have suffered,” Draco says dryly.
“Fuck you, Malfoy,” Hermione says, voice cracking in her anger.
“Oh, Granger, I really wouldn't advise that,” Draco says, eyes glinting with malice.
“I hate you,” Hermione says fiercely, and there are tears in her eyes.
“I know,” Draco says, his tone almost kind. “I hate you too.”
~~*~~
Harry argued with him about it. He didn't understand why it was such a horrible idea and Draco, much as he tried, couldn't explain it to him. Harry was as pure-blooded as he was and yet they were from vastly different worlds.
Draco was an elitist, a racist, a snob, and a purist.
Harry was naive and ignorant.
They shouted at each other and Draco threw a book at Harry's head.
They ended the argument on the floor with violent sex. Laying there with their mingled sweat cooling on their skin and their breath coming fast and laboured around pounding hearts, they ultimately decided to agree to disagree.
~~*~~
1:43 p.m.
“What you really want to know is how to make him love you,” Draco says after a few minutes of silence. “Isn't it?”
“Yes,” Hermione says. “Yes, I... Oh god, I love him so much. I can't stand this.”
“It's not that difficult,” Draco says with a shrug. “It's quite simple, really. Give him what he wants.”
Hermione laughs around a sob and rubs her eyes with the thumb and finger of one perfectly manicured hand. “And what is that? You know so much, tell me what Harry wants.”
“Harry wants what he's always wanted,” Draco says. His hand stills on Sebastian's back and his expression becomes remote. “Harry wants what he's always wanted, what he's never had, the one thing that I... could never give him.”
“Wouldn't,” Hermione corrects him.
It's not said unkindly but Draco tenses just the same. “Have it your way,” he says. “Wouldn't.”
“A family,” Hermione says.
“Yes.” Draco's fingers go back to stroking the cat's back. “Give him that, and he'll stay. He'll love you and it will never again cross his mind to wander from your bed.”
“He's never--”
“He has,” Draco says with calm certainty. “He has and some part of you knows it or you wouldn't be here asking me to teach you how to make him love you.”
Her eyes fixed on her own lap, Hermione nods. “But what if... what if it's not enough?”
“It will be,” Draco assures her.
“I mean for me,” Hermione clarifies. “What if being a mother and a wife and... and giving him a family... What if it's not enough?”
Draco blinks at her incredulously. “What else could you want from him?”
Hermione lifts her hands and lets them drop helplessly. “I don't know, Malfoy,” she says with a bitter laugh. She still isn't looking at him and Draco wonders if part of her is afraid to. “Passion? Desire? Love that doesn't come with conditions? I want him to love me like he... like he loves you,” she confesses.
“Well too fucking bad, Granger,” Draco snaps, sitting forward and glaring with eyes that are narrow slits of grey at her bowed head. “That is mine. That is mine and I will take it with me to the grave. I wouldn't give it to you even if I could.”
“Why do you hate me so much?” Hermione whispers.
“Why do you care?” Draco says. He sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Because, Granger, you took everything. Well intentioned or not, you took everything. Am I supposed to love you for it? Be grateful? There are reasons why we didn't live among Muggles. You think it was just because we saw them as inferior, or because we didn't understand. That's part of it, but the other part is because it was not safe. But it's done now, isn't it? And you have your infernal desegregation. I wish you joy of it.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes, Hermione staring down at her hands in her lap and saying nothing, taking deep breaths and trying not to let the tears gathering in her lashes fall, Draco stroking Sebastian's fur and thinking about getting up to pour himself a drink just to have something to do.
Hermione breaks the silence. “Why...?” Her voice cracks. She licks her lips and tries again. “Why wouldn't you?”
“Why wouldn't I what?” Draco says, sure that he already knows exactly what.
“Give him a family,” Hermione says, her voice a shamed whisper. “Why... if you love him, why wouldn't you?”
~~*~~
“It would be permanent,” Draco said.
Snape nodded and said nothing, watching Draco's face with beetle-black eyes, waiting, the vial of potion held loosely in his hand.
The potion was something like Pollyjuice Potion, except it was nothing like that at all. It didn't transform the drinker into someone else, it changed their sex, their gender, their appearance... everything. Men were not meant to bear children, that was the right of women. It was their power and it went against nature to change that. Something Snape had concluded after years of testing and brewing and discarding. So he couldn't help Draco, a male, have a child, but he could make Draco female and thereby give him that power. That was how the potion worked. And its effects were lasting. It was really a very brilliant invention, and one Snape was rather proud of.
Draco massaged his temple with shaking fingers and stared at the vial. The potion inside it would change his life in a thousand ways, many of which he could not anticipate. But it would make it possible for him to have children, Harry's children. Children with hair like a burst of coal powder and eyes like mercury rolling in the palm of his hand. Warm skin and innocence. Laughter and lazy Sundays. A family.
“I've never thought of myself as female, you know,” Draco said dully.
Snape shrugged. “You will,” he said, and offered the potion.
Draco looked at his hand, the red liquid in the vial, and swallowed the lump forming in his throat.
Harry wouldn't leave him if he didn't take it. He didn't even know what Draco was doing. Tea with a friend, Draco had told him, and Harry had believed him. But Harry desperately wanted a family, more than anything, and Draco could see it. Every time he looked at a mother or father with a child, he could see it there. That want like a physical touch.
Draco reached out and snatched the vial of potion from Snape's hand before he could change his mind. He lifted it before his eyes, shining like a garnet in the dank light of the Hogwarts dungeon, then put it away in his pocket. He inclined his head to Snape, thanking him, then slipped out, striding by curiously gaping students and up the stairs.
~~*~~
2:35 p.m.
“That is not your business, Granger,” Draco says. He stands up and gives her a pointed look. “And I think I'm done talking to you. I'd like for you to leave now.”
Hermione nods and gets shakily to her feet. She pauses in the entry way and looks back at him. “I'm sorry, Malfoy.”
“And don't come back,” Draco says.
“All right. And... and thank you.”
“Get out!”
~~*~~
Day 1,111
6:14 p.m.
Draco is on the balcony, sitting on a chaise lounge with a tumbler in his hand and a bottle on the little table by his arm. Two house elves take turns cranking the old phonograph that is playing Beethoven. He has his eyes closed and he hums softly under his breath to the music.
Beside him on the couch is a copy of the Daily Prophet, the first page of which is devoted to Harry Potter and Minister of Magic, Hermione Granger-Potter's divorce announcement. Complete with gossip and speculation and, thankfully, not one single mention of Draco's name.
The sun has just begun to set, a fading of the light that will soon become streaks of amber and crimson.
On the table beside the bottle of whiskey is a vial of potion. It's blue and the taste is vaguely reminiscent of well-deserved hang-overs and toilet bowl water.
The record on the phonograph finishes and one of the elves changes it to something else. Still Beethoven. Für Elise.
~~*~~
They went to Venice the summer before. They acted just like lovers on holiday, which they were, Harry pointed out when Draco mentioned it.
They watched a glass-blower make a sculpture of twisted, sensual, burning colours. It took most of the day and Harry tried several times to drag Draco away, but he refused and when the artist was done, he bought the thing.
“What for?” Harry asked, laughing. He was, of course, the one required to carry the damn thing.
“Because I wanted it,” Draco said simply. “Because it's beautiful and I watched it happen and really, Potter, you have no appreciation for art.”
“Call it what you want. It looks like a dying peacock to me,” Harry said.
“My point exactly,” Draco said dryly.
Venice in the summer was hot and crowded and sticky, but neither of them noticed or cared. They had a hotel room with a balcony that looked out onto the Grand Canal and sometimes in the evening, there were fireworks.
They listened to Für Elise played on crystal water goblets.
Harry fucked him on an oriental silk rug in the middle of their room and after, Draco lay there watching him through half-closed eyes and murmured poetry in his ear.
“If there were a place we didn't know of, and there,
on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed
what they could never bring to mastery here--the bold
exploits of their high-flying hearts,
their towers of pleasure, their ladders
that have long since been standing where there was no ground, leaning
just on each other, trembling--and could master all this,
before the surrounding spectators, the innumerable, soundless dead;
Would these, then, throw down their final, forever saved-up,
forever hidden, unknown to us, eternally valid
coins of happiness before the at last
genuinely smiling pair on the gratified
carpet?”*
“That's nice,” Harry whispered. He trailed his hand down Draco's back, fingers lingering on the little grooves of his spine.
Draco opened his eyes and blinked slowly back at him, his long, pale lashes catching the flickering light from the candles Harry had lit earlier. He stared at Harry stretched out there beside him, hair more tangled than usual from Draco's fingers, skin beaded with sweat that looked like glitter in the candlelight.
His expression became sad for an instant. “It is,” he agreed and closed his eyes again with a sigh.
“Draco?” Harry said, frowning a little.
“Hmm?”
Harry hesitated, his hand stilling on Draco's back for a moment. “Nothing,” he said eventually.
~~*~~
6:57 p.m.
“Master Draco must take his potion now.”
Draco is half dozing and he pulls himself back reluctantly and glares at his house elf. Gabby.
“Stupid name,” he mutters.
“Master Draco?”
Draco nods and takes the vial from the table. He takes the little bit of cork out of the top and holds it up, peering at the vibrant blue colour. His eyes go blank and far away.
Very slowly, deliberately, he turns the vial up and spills the potion on the floor. It makes a clear pattering sound on the stone and a little sky blue puddle between his feet.
Draco tosses the glass vial away and it hits the side of the ledge around the balcony and shatters with a sound like little silver bells.
“Clean that up,” Draco says, tilting his head back on the back of the lounge and closing his eyes again. Seeking Venice. Rilke and candlelight.
Gabby nods and disappears with a pop to go find the broom and mop.
~~*~~
There should have been something that triggered it. Such a thing, such a world altering, life shifting thing deserved a catalyst of some sort at the very least, Draco would think later.
“I can't do this anymore,” Draco said as he walked out of the bathroom. He'd just poured the red potion that Snape had given him down the drain in the bathroom sink.
He would think later, with regret, that his hands should have been shaking.
Harry was reading the Daily Prophet with a scowl on his face and he looked up when Draco spoke and his expression didn't change for a moment because he was still thinking about whatever it was he had been reading. He took in the way Draco was standing, stiffly and exceptionally still, the way his eyes looked cold and remote, and he put the paper down.
“Can't do what anymore?” Harry asked cautiously.
“This,” Draco said simply. “All of this.”
At the time, Draco was grateful that Harry didn't try to stop him from leaving. It was only later that he would wonder why.
~~*~~
Day 1,118
The last day...
1:15 p.m.
Draco listens to the sound of footsteps on the floor and opens his eyes. Harry is standing there in the doorway looking in at him, his green eyes intense and searching.
“Master Draco, Master Harry wishes to see you, sir.”
Draco smiles a little and shifts his eyes to his house elf. “I can see that, Gabby, thank you.”
The elf bows smartly and leaves them alone.
“Hello, Harry,” Draco says.
Harry lets out a shuddering breath and comes into the room. “You look like shit, Draco,” he says, and falls into the chair beside the bed.
“Thanks so much,” Draco says, voice cracking and faint. “You always were the most charming person.”
Harry nods like Draco has said something profound, then rakes his hand through his hair and looks him directly in the eyes, his expression miserable and haunted. “I'm sorry,” he says.
Draco lifts a brow at him. “For what?”
“For not fighting for you,” Harry says. “For not fighting to keep you.”
Draco is quiet for a minute, just looking at him. He hasn't seen Harry up closer than the width of an empty room in over three years. He's still beautiful, but the time has not been good to him. He looks weary and drawn, dark circles from lack of sleep stain the thin skin around his eyes and he doesn't look like he's smiled in a long time.
Sebastian hops up on the bed and nudges one of Draco's hands.
“Why didn't you fight for me?” Draco asks.
Harry lifts one hand in a helpless gesture and drops it. “Because you didn't want me to.”
“Can't becomes the answer to everything, because there are no other answers,” Draco says, speaking so softly that he doubts Harry can hear him anyway. It's something his disease has taught him.
Harry does hear it, though, and he nods like he knows exactly what Draco means. Perhaps he does. Draco considers it and thinks that he probably does.
“Hermione came to see you,” Harry says abruptly.
“Yes, she did,” Draco says. “I told her what she wanted to know. I guess she didn't like what she heard.”
Harry frowns at him and sits forward in his chair, elbows on his knees. “She wants to have children now,” Harry says. “I told her no. Then I walked out.”
It's said simply, but there is the honesty of confession in it and Draco looks at him for a moment like he's lost his mind. “Why?”
“Why did you stop taking your potion?” Harry asks instead of answering him. He asks it like it is his answer.
Draco looks away from him, out the window. When he shifts his gaze back, his eyes are blank and distant.
“Draco, don't do that,” Harry whispers, a note of pleading in his voice. “Don't.”
Draco closes his eyes and breathes deeply a few times. When he opens them again, the blankness is gone and Harry relaxes.
“You should do it,” Draco says. “Make children. Have a family. Be happy.”
Harry laughs and shakes his head. It is a sound entirely devoid of humour. It makes Draco a little sad to hear it.
“Fool,” Harry whispers.
Draco shrugs, then hisses out a breath as pain shoots up his side. He closes his eyes for a few minutes, taking deep breaths until it stops. When he opens them again, Sebastian is in Harry's lap purring, and some time has passed because the shadows on the wall have shifted.
“Harry?”
“What?”
“Stay?”
Harry lifts a brow at him and moves a little in his chair, settling. He strokes the cat's back with fingers that want to reach out and smooth the pale hair back from Draco's face, but don't quite dare. “You know I will,” he says.
“I don't want you to... see me like this but...” Hermione's words about him dying alone echo in his mind and frighten him now like they didn't then. “I hate you seeing me like this, but I don't want to die alone,” he confesses.
“I've seen you every other way, why should this be any different?” Harry murmurs.
“Okay,” Draco says. And that's all.
Harry stays and watches him as he drifts in and out of consciousness and finally falls asleep. He dozes himself for a little while, waking when the even pattern of Draco's breathing falters.
He gets up and moves to sit on the edge of the bed beside Draco. Draco cracks his eyes open, the white gold fans of his lashes fluttering tiredly. Harry brushes the hair that's fallen into his face back and Draco instinctively moves his face into the warmth of his hand.
“If there were a place we didn't know of,” Harry says softly, “and there, on some unsayable carpet, lovers displayed what they could never bring to mastery here...”
“That's nice,” Draco says, voice very faint and slurring.
“It is,” Harry agrees as he settles down on the bed beside him.
//finis//
A/N: *An excerpt from the “Duino Elegies” by Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Stephen Mitchell.