fic: Between the Shadow and the Soul

May 05, 2011 13:42

Title: Between the Shadow and the Soul
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 600
Pairing: H/D (and a so small you'll blink and miss it side of Harry/Ginny)
Warnings: general dark, broken boys in a dark, broken world
Summary: It's a year later and nothing's changed. It's a year later and everything's changed.
Notes: Written for bryoneybrynn just because and sort of as an early birthday gift because I adore her to pieces. Unbeta'd just because it's a drabble. Lmk if you find mistakes, of course. :)


Between the Shadow and the Soul

It's a year later and nothing's changed. It's a year later and everything's changed. They stand apart. They stand together. Two faces, two souls, the two of them grappling between there and gone and dead and living and easy and right and just at the cusp of unfair and too soon, two pairs of hands stoic and restless, two guts that scream do it and wait, two hearts that beat like hummingbird wings in swift pursuit of the something more they cannot mouth or name.

It's a year before and everything is different. It's a year before and nothing's the same. Men crowd the Manor with razor-blade eyes, cornering wilting things in all corners and nooks like breathless prey at the edge of a cliff. Draco dares not jump, dares not stay, dares not and dares not and cannot console his empty heart that sings and sings in the void and darkness. Evil creeps between his sheets and tangles in his hair and sticks to the muck on the bottom of his boots after a walk through what used to be his mother's gardens, which is now nothing but a puddle of caking mud and debris and filth. It gets everywhere, between the fibres of the carpets, clutched to the corners of shadows, crumbling off the clawfoot tub and stopping the drains. He is alone and he is surrounded, and he waits and waits and breathes relief when He whispers it's time and to Hogwarts they go, raging against infernal winds with the black skies at their backs.

It's a year before and Harry is scared. It's a year before and Harry is ready. At the precipice of the end of everything, his thoughts linger, ginger hair and blond, coffee-stained eyes or the malice of silver, thoughts becoming of a boy of seventeen or thoughts that wrack him against his bed and leave sweaty sheets stained with guilt in his wake. He thinks of her and he doesn't. He thinks of everything, of the simple ease of just feeling and knowing how to feel and then embraces the numbness in not feeling at all because that is all there is left to do. Harry dives headfirst into the void of whatever comes after, and when he comes back, he is different and changed and someone else entirely. Nobody understands, nobody sees because they don't want to see or they can't bear to see it, but Harry is not the same. These dark things that have swept his back are like anchors in his heart, dead weight and hauling his decisions from his tongue, heavy shoves in the direction he knows he is going before he gets there.

It's now. It's time. Sinking ghosts toil beneath the softness of the earth, shedding their skins to leave behind the survivors, the ones who stood up and the ones who just stood, both the same and no matter how they got there because they remain and can breathe the scent of the rising dawn and feel the aching clutch in their chests that draw them close and bring their mouths together in a clash of desperation.

They have a lifetime to discover this moment. They have no time at all. The present is ever waning, drifting, shifting, until it has passed and is gone. The things that have changed have changed, and what comes will come. All that is left is the truth and all that is necessary remains, everything else gone to the winds and away.

fic, rating: pg-13, h/d

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