Clanging and other late night sounds that exist only in my head
I'm, like, so productive.
*brandishes new fic*
*cackles*
After the war, Draco packed his bags.
He took one last short walk around the Manor, avoiding the soot-darkened wall where Aunt Bella had cast Incendio, the barrenness of the floors where blood-streaked Bokharan carpets had been removed, and the garden where nothing would grow again.
He looked, instead, at the soft light filtering through muslin curtains, warming the white piano in his mother’s suite, and the long corridors of his sleeping ancestors, forever fair and gilt-framed. He paused at the still-beautiful entranceway, with its sputtering fountain and its carvings of entwined serpents and dragons, fractured by stained glass.
He appointed Blaise in charge of the Manor’s restoration, and settled his affairs.
He saw his father’s grave, and laid Lucius’ favourite flower on the stone - white myrtle, pale against gunmetal grey.
He left.
::
He’d never thought, after the war, he’d be back at Grimmauld Place.
He trailed his fingers across dusty cabinets, dusty chairs, down dusty banisters of creaking stairways. The silence enveloped him, like a recalcitrant friend, whispering white noise into his ears.
He saw Remus, whose hair was completely grey, and quietly wrote a will leaving him everything.
He saw Neville, who still limped, but managed a smile when Neville showed him his new cactus-hibiscus hybrid.
He said his goodbyes.
He did not see Hermione or Ron, as they were dead.
Harry left, and did not look back.
::
Draco decided he did not really like Paris.
The cafes were sun-speckled, and their food lacklustre, overpriced. The buildings were stone in varying shades of grey, reminding him of London, but everything was slightly off.
Separated by a narrow slip of water, but here - the people were happy, and laughed too much.
It was too sunny.
Even in their paintings - Renoir, Monet - there were no shadows.
Draco felt disoriented.
He popped into Chanel and Gaultier, had his hair and nails done, summoned his house-elf, and portkeyed away.
::
Harry went to New York. He’d always wondered what it would be like.
Yellow cabs were not like black London cabs. They were dirtier, and faster.
The Wizarding district was contained in a huge white building, with sliding doors and glass panels and owls kept in stylish chrome cages. The place gleamed. It was airy, bright, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere.
Harry felt - well, he was not sure he felt anything, but he was slightly surprised.
He went into a bar called Gee-Wiz, and had something called a Brain Splicher when he realised they didn’t serve Butterbeer. The music was pounding, the lyrics guttural, and all around were steel tables and dimmed lights and little bar chairs that swivelled.
Harry felt the press of foreign bodies around him, the faint dampness from a spilled drink on his thigh; far from home, and alone.
::
Draco had not expected Rome to be so small.
He walked through the city, pausing now and then to show his mother a particularly interesting site from his two-way mirror. The Trevi fountain seemed at once grand and delicate, like the wisp of a divine dream, and the Colosseum was, well, rather large, and round, and crumbling.
Draco walked through Rome, and tried not to see fragments of the Manor, and ruins everywhere.
He decided he needed to travel further afield, somewhere not so close to home, where he could create new memories, and cleverly ignore his old ones.
He decided to go to Thailand.
::
Harry was not sure what to make of L.A.
In New York and London, he had become used to walking everywhere. That didn’t seem possible in L.A., and Apparating from point to point became rather tiresome, especially when he realised all the notable attractions seemed to be some famous Muggle’s front gates.
Instead of Butterbeer, he sipped some odd concoction called a wheat grass shot, and idly worried about the salesgirl being so thin.
He liked the sunshine, though, and splashed out on a hotel room with a bathtub on the balcony, so he could squint at the sun and yet feel cool, weightless and buffeted by water, at the same time.
He thought - maybe he ought to get away from cities for a while. Find some place where he had nothing but the weather and water to occupy him.
A beach, maybe - yes, that would be perfect.
::
Draco was floating, and not thinking about much.
He had given up on freckle-free skin on the third day, and now lay unabashedly out of the shade, skin slaked with an old stock of Severus’ SPF 50++ sun-delimiting draught.
His mind flitted drowsily around shallow pools of thought, never alighting long enough for any images - Pansy, screaming; Severus, hair not greasy but matted with blood - to materialize.
He took each indistinct image - Volde- and quickly compressed them, making them small, and round, and opaque, swallowing his pain down down down like little Muggle pills.
Turning on his back on the float, Draco narrowed his eyes, and tried to gauge the position of the sun. Maybe he should stop lying around the hotel pool, and do something different. Like lie on the beach and float in the sea, for a change.
Draco thought about sand against his delicate skin, steadfastly ignoring memories of weeks without bathing and thrashing through the unforgiving Welsh forests around Godric’s Hollow, and shuddered.
Maybe he could ask Sunny the house-elf to get him a cocktail.
::
Harry liked Phuket immediately.
The sun was warm, the sea was clear, and the people were friendly and had wide, slightly manic grins that reminded him of the Weasley twins, or maybe Sirius, when he had been happy.
At sunset, he trudged back up to the hotel, shaking his head and raining water droplets in all directions like an overgrown puppy.
He didn’t realise he’d been so near a deck chair when he’d done so.
‘Hey!’ The shout was immediate, and indignant. ‘Watch where you’re single-handedly trying to change the weather system, plebeian.’
Harry whirled around, his heart thumping.
‘Malfoy?’
The pink lump on the deck chair moved, and Harry beheld the astounding sight of a sunburnt, freckled, bug-eyed Malfoy. In Thailand.
They said it together.
‘Oh, fuck.’
::
They had never, in their rather long history, successfully ignored one another.
Harry eyed Draco with narrowed eyes from his position on the beach.
Draco had stolen all of Harry’s candy from America, claiming it as fair tribute to his act of conciliation - to wit, to detach himself from the hotel pool and lie on real sand, after three days of Harry’s nagging.
Harry eyed the shiny orange wrappers of Reeves Peanut Butter Cups, looking like neon beached crabs dotted around their mountain of pillows and beach mats, a tad wistfully.
Neither mentioned that though their aim had been to get away from home, they didn’t realise they’d be alone.
Harry waited for the perfect moment, and skilfully flicked a sand crab onto Malfoy’s bare shoulder, making him shriek like a girl.
::
Severus tapped his cane against his foot impatiently.
The International Portkey Station was crowded, as usual, and he thought he spied - he decorously wrinkled his nose - that Longbottom boy, limping, if anything.
Severus ignored the useless appendage that was his left leg. He would have a Potions breakthrough any day now, and then the cane would go.
In an abrupt movement, he snapped open his pocket watch, narrowing his eyes. Draco was, uncharacteristically, late. Severus stifled an unseemly pang of worry, a vestige from the war, when Draco and his mother’s security had occupied much of his thoughts. Surely Draco would, could not have -
‘Harry! Do something with your hair, for Merlin’s sake. And I can still see - here, button up your shirt. I can’t believe you made us late!’
‘Oh, stop worrying. I’m sure your mum and Snape aren’t here yet. Here - let me… Draco!’ A bark of laughter. ‘Your shorts are still undone.’
‘It isn’t my fault someone thought canoodling in bed with the portkey within flinging distance was a good idea. Shite.’
The two voices rounded the corner, and Severus felt a little faint.
Potter was - there was no other word for it - he was caressing Severus’ godson, messing his hair and nuzzling the crook of his neck even as Draco buttoned up his trousers.
Severus could see the large reddish mark, which looked quite recent and spread from Potter’s collarbone to the middle of his chest, from twenty-feet away.
How had this happened?
‘There, sweetheart.’ Harry tongued Draco’s ear playfully. ‘Now we have the hair to match.’
‘Potter, you utter git. Stop that and help me -’
‘Harry!’
Another voice Severus never thought he’d hear again, and had rejoiced in the notion. Remus bloody Lupin. Severus momentarily shut his eyes.
‘And Draco! Well.’ Severus could hear that familiar wry warmth, tinged with amusement. ‘Draco, this is certainly a pleasure. I’m sure you remember Neville. Harry, you look so well. This is turning out to be something of a Hogwarts reunion, isn’t it? And is that Severus I see lurking behind that pillar…?’
Severus repressed the urge to duck and hide, and gritted his teeth.
The war was over, but some things could not be foreborne.
If Lupin started twinkling like Dumbledore, someone would have to pay.
*brandishes new fic*
*cackles*
After the war, Draco packed his bags.
He took one last short walk around the Manor, avoiding the soot-darkened wall where Aunt Bella had cast Incendio, the barrenness of the floors where blood-streaked Bokharan carpets had been removed, and the garden where nothing would grow again.
He looked, instead, at the soft light filtering through muslin curtains, warming the white piano in his mother’s suite, and the long corridors of his sleeping ancestors, forever fair and gilt-framed. He paused at the still-beautiful entranceway, with its sputtering fountain and its carvings of entwined serpents and dragons, fractured by stained glass.
He appointed Blaise in charge of the Manor’s restoration, and settled his affairs.
He saw his father’s grave, and laid Lucius’ favourite flower on the stone - white myrtle, pale against gunmetal grey.
He left.
::
He’d never thought, after the war, he’d be back at Grimmauld Place.
He trailed his fingers across dusty cabinets, dusty chairs, down dusty banisters of creaking stairways. The silence enveloped him, like a recalcitrant friend, whispering white noise into his ears.
He saw Remus, whose hair was completely grey, and quietly wrote a will leaving him everything.
He saw Neville, who still limped, but managed a smile when Neville showed him his new cactus-hibiscus hybrid.
He said his goodbyes.
He did not see Hermione or Ron, as they were dead.
Harry left, and did not look back.
::
Draco decided he did not really like Paris.
The cafes were sun-speckled, and their food lacklustre, overpriced. The buildings were stone in varying shades of grey, reminding him of London, but everything was slightly off.
Separated by a narrow slip of water, but here - the people were happy, and laughed too much.
It was too sunny.
Even in their paintings - Renoir, Monet - there were no shadows.
Draco felt disoriented.
He popped into Chanel and Gaultier, had his hair and nails done, summoned his house-elf, and portkeyed away.
::
Harry went to New York. He’d always wondered what it would be like.
Yellow cabs were not like black London cabs. They were dirtier, and faster.
The Wizarding district was contained in a huge white building, with sliding doors and glass panels and owls kept in stylish chrome cages. The place gleamed. It was airy, bright, and there was not a speck of dust anywhere.
Harry felt - well, he was not sure he felt anything, but he was slightly surprised.
He went into a bar called Gee-Wiz, and had something called a Brain Splicher when he realised they didn’t serve Butterbeer. The music was pounding, the lyrics guttural, and all around were steel tables and dimmed lights and little bar chairs that swivelled.
Harry felt the press of foreign bodies around him, the faint dampness from a spilled drink on his thigh; far from home, and alone.
::
Draco had not expected Rome to be so small.
He walked through the city, pausing now and then to show his mother a particularly interesting site from his two-way mirror. The Trevi fountain seemed at once grand and delicate, like the wisp of a divine dream, and the Colosseum was, well, rather large, and round, and crumbling.
Draco walked through Rome, and tried not to see fragments of the Manor, and ruins everywhere.
He decided he needed to travel further afield, somewhere not so close to home, where he could create new memories, and cleverly ignore his old ones.
He decided to go to Thailand.
::
Harry was not sure what to make of L.A.
In New York and London, he had become used to walking everywhere. That didn’t seem possible in L.A., and Apparating from point to point became rather tiresome, especially when he realised all the notable attractions seemed to be some famous Muggle’s front gates.
Instead of Butterbeer, he sipped some odd concoction called a wheat grass shot, and idly worried about the salesgirl being so thin.
He liked the sunshine, though, and splashed out on a hotel room with a bathtub on the balcony, so he could squint at the sun and yet feel cool, weightless and buffeted by water, at the same time.
He thought - maybe he ought to get away from cities for a while. Find some place where he had nothing but the weather and water to occupy him.
A beach, maybe - yes, that would be perfect.
::
Draco was floating, and not thinking about much.
He had given up on freckle-free skin on the third day, and now lay unabashedly out of the shade, skin slaked with an old stock of Severus’ SPF 50++ sun-delimiting draught.
His mind flitted drowsily around shallow pools of thought, never alighting long enough for any images - Pansy, screaming; Severus, hair not greasy but matted with blood - to materialize.
He took each indistinct image - Volde- and quickly compressed them, making them small, and round, and opaque, swallowing his pain down down down like little Muggle pills.
Turning on his back on the float, Draco narrowed his eyes, and tried to gauge the position of the sun. Maybe he should stop lying around the hotel pool, and do something different. Like lie on the beach and float in the sea, for a change.
Draco thought about sand against his delicate skin, steadfastly ignoring memories of weeks without bathing and thrashing through the unforgiving Welsh forests around Godric’s Hollow, and shuddered.
Maybe he could ask Sunny the house-elf to get him a cocktail.
::
Harry liked Phuket immediately.
The sun was warm, the sea was clear, and the people were friendly and had wide, slightly manic grins that reminded him of the Weasley twins, or maybe Sirius, when he had been happy.
At sunset, he trudged back up to the hotel, shaking his head and raining water droplets in all directions like an overgrown puppy.
He didn’t realise he’d been so near a deck chair when he’d done so.
‘Hey!’ The shout was immediate, and indignant. ‘Watch where you’re single-handedly trying to change the weather system, plebeian.’
Harry whirled around, his heart thumping.
‘Malfoy?’
The pink lump on the deck chair moved, and Harry beheld the astounding sight of a sunburnt, freckled, bug-eyed Malfoy. In Thailand.
They said it together.
‘Oh, fuck.’
::
They had never, in their rather long history, successfully ignored one another.
Harry eyed Draco with narrowed eyes from his position on the beach.
Draco had stolen all of Harry’s candy from America, claiming it as fair tribute to his act of conciliation - to wit, to detach himself from the hotel pool and lie on real sand, after three days of Harry’s nagging.
Harry eyed the shiny orange wrappers of Reeves Peanut Butter Cups, looking like neon beached crabs dotted around their mountain of pillows and beach mats, a tad wistfully.
Neither mentioned that though their aim had been to get away from home, they didn’t realise they’d be alone.
Harry waited for the perfect moment, and skilfully flicked a sand crab onto Malfoy’s bare shoulder, making him shriek like a girl.
::
Severus tapped his cane against his foot impatiently.
The International Portkey Station was crowded, as usual, and he thought he spied - he decorously wrinkled his nose - that Longbottom boy, limping, if anything.
Severus ignored the useless appendage that was his left leg. He would have a Potions breakthrough any day now, and then the cane would go.
In an abrupt movement, he snapped open his pocket watch, narrowing his eyes. Draco was, uncharacteristically, late. Severus stifled an unseemly pang of worry, a vestige from the war, when Draco and his mother’s security had occupied much of his thoughts. Surely Draco would, could not have -
‘Harry! Do something with your hair, for Merlin’s sake. And I can still see - here, button up your shirt. I can’t believe you made us late!’
‘Oh, stop worrying. I’m sure your mum and Snape aren’t here yet. Here - let me… Draco!’ A bark of laughter. ‘Your shorts are still undone.’
‘It isn’t my fault someone thought canoodling in bed with the portkey within flinging distance was a good idea. Shite.’
The two voices rounded the corner, and Severus felt a little faint.
Potter was - there was no other word for it - he was caressing Severus’ godson, messing his hair and nuzzling the crook of his neck even as Draco buttoned up his trousers.
Severus could see the large reddish mark, which looked quite recent and spread from Potter’s collarbone to the middle of his chest, from twenty-feet away.
How had this happened?
‘There, sweetheart.’ Harry tongued Draco’s ear playfully. ‘Now we have the hair to match.’
‘Potter, you utter git. Stop that and help me -’
‘Harry!’
Another voice Severus never thought he’d hear again, and had rejoiced in the notion. Remus bloody Lupin. Severus momentarily shut his eyes.
‘And Draco! Well.’ Severus could hear that familiar wry warmth, tinged with amusement. ‘Draco, this is certainly a pleasure. I’m sure you remember Neville. Harry, you look so well. This is turning out to be something of a Hogwarts reunion, isn’t it? And is that Severus I see lurking behind that pillar…?’
Severus repressed the urge to duck and hide, and gritted his teeth.
The war was over, but some things could not be foreborne.
If Lupin started twinkling like Dumbledore, someone would have to pay.