In The Light
I'm re-posting the only other HP fic I wrote, for posterities sake, and for the convenience of having it all together. I can't remeber whether I posted it to any comms or not. Bugger.
Hmmm. I've just noticed that I included formatting tags with the word doc, a clue that I did post it SOMEWHERE... But where? Bugger.
Fandom: HP
Pairing: Draco/Harry
Rating: Hard Rish
Summery: Harry and Draco face some hard truths, and reach a common ground.
Spoilers: Written in Feb., so, only by accident
I found a place where we can talk.
I found a way to reach a middle gound.
Keep your castle in my sandbox.
Build it up so we can burn it down.
(Veruca Salt, Sound of the Bell)
“Well, Sirius was my godfather. That’s why…that’s why…”
Harry can’t bring himself to go on, and he doesn’t need to.
~
“You probably think it was your fault, don’t you?” Flash of a glass raised to pale lips in the dark. The voice wasn’t sympathetic, but it wasn’t harsh, just carefully casual and neutral.
“No one ever let me believe anything else.”
“But it wasn’t.” Stated as a fact, too obvious to refute.
“Tell that to a fifteen year old boy, Malfoy.”
“I see.”
~
“I think we’re out of brandy.”
Sounds of someone quickly draining a glass. “We are now. Hang on.”
Fingers click, a house elf appears with another bottle.
“We could turn the lights on, it’s been dark for an hour, now.”
“Malfoy…” hands touch, draw away from a wand, and the house elf disappears.
~
“You never liked me.”
“You were rude to me when we first met.”
“You were rude to me first!”
“Well, you were just rude. You said stuff about Ron.”
“Potter. I was eleven.”
“Malfoy. So was I.”
“Seems a bloody long time ago now, doesn’t it?”
Two hands reach for the bottle at the same time, linger, and than the more tanned of the two concedes defeat and retreats. A glass is poured, and handed over.
“Why did you come back here?”
“Why did you come with me?”
“We should have talked about this earlier.”
Shoulders a lot broader than they had been ten years ago shrugged. “Malfoy, we should have done a lot of things. I should have saved my godfather. You should have saved your mother. We all should have saved Dumbledore. Christ. Does it really matter what we talk about and when?”
Small pause, now, as another glass is poured and kept, emptied and re-poured. “I think this place is starting to affect you, Potter. I never realised you kept such a well of guilt in you.”
“Malfoys don’t feel guilt?”
“Not much.”
“Oh.”
~
“I can’t believe you brought your house elf with you. You are so arrogant.”
Fingers clicked again, the tiny elf was back, groveling happily.
“I think it’s time to turn the lights on.”
“Wait…”
“For what? You can be miserable in front of a fire, too, Po-”
A hand on his mouth stopped him. “Malfoy. Thank you.”
“Mmmmph.”
The house elf lit the fire and the lamps around the room, and the brightness blinded the two young men even before the sight of each other had a chance.
~
Draco Malfoy hadn’t wanted to take the dark mark. He hadn’t wanted to fight for Dumbledore either, but after his father had disinherited him, he hadn’t had much of a choice. He couldn’t be a Death Eater, he could no longer be a Malfoy, and now he was stuck being a Fighter for What Was Right and Good, a prospect that made him sick. He confused the other members of the Order, but didn’t care.
Harry Potter hated him being a part of everything, at first. But they were no longer eleven, they had been eighteen and he realised that he couldn’t hold a schoolboy grudge for the rest of his life. Draco had changed, slightly. He was more aloof, colder, less inclined to pranks and idiotic jibes. Harry couldn’t imagine this pale, silvery man making ‘Potter Stinks’ badges, not anymore. Harry was more confused than anyone.
The war, the actual battle-with-people-dying part of it, had gone on for two years and had ended three months ago. The boys were now almost twenty one, no longer boys at all. Sick of the site of pain and death, Harry had given up on his dreams of becoming an Auror and had tossed around the idea of professional Quidditch playing. Draco hadn’t really seemed to do anything, right up until the point when a death eater they’d missed, presumed dead, had slaughtered his mother right in front of him. The killer hadn’t even had time to smirk over the deed before Draco had shot the Avada Kedavra curse right at his heart.
Draco hadn’t gone to Azkaban. Everyone, if not actually turning a blind eye, at least gave him special compensation. It was still war, some believed, until every last death eater had been found and destroyed. Draco remained silent on the matter. Only Harry had caught him fighting for breath in a forgotten corner of Hogwarts, his eyes rimmed with red, and tears quickly spelled to dry on his white skin.
Grimmauld Place had been obvious.
~
Draco and Harry sat on opposite ends of a big, squashy couch, placed squarely in front of a roaring fire. Between them, the cushions had been spelled to be as firm as a table, and the bottles of brandy, firewhiskey and cognac were lined up neatly. They were facing each other, knees drawn up in unconsciously identical positions.
“You know, all the times we’ve talked, actually talked, Potter, we’ve been drunk.”
Harry snorted, “What all three of them?”
“You remember the number?” One of Draco’s eyebrows raised in surprise. Harry just shrugged. “It’s always been in the dark, too,” Draco mused, running a wet finger absently around the edge of his crystal goblet to make it sing.
“So why turn on the lights this time?” Harry asked, trying the same trick on his own goblet, and failing.
Draco looked up, looked him in the eye. “Maybe I just wanted to stop seeing you in the dark.”
Harry didn’t respond, breaking eye contact to stare into the fire. The silence that descended between them, for once, wasn’t cold.
~
“I’m not a bad person,” Harry whispered at some point during the evening. Draco looked up sharply, but kept his mouth shut. “I’m not. But things happen. People around me die, and there’s always been so much for me to live up to…whenever I can’t do it things just happen, and there’s no one to blame but me. I make enemies like most people make cups of tea. I’ve had more people hate me than I can even remember, hell, even you, Malfoy. But I’m not a bad person.”
Draco thought for a while before he answered. “No, you’re not. But being a good person doesn’t always mean things are going to go right for you.”
“It isn’t fair.”
“Fair? Potter, you can’t still believe in the concept of fair, can you? It’s not fair that your godfather got killed. It’s not fair that my father hated me before he died. It’s not bloody well fair that my mother, who did her very best to stay out of the whole thing, got killed right in front of my eyes. But who are we going to complain to?”
Harry looked so miserable that Draco forced his tone to soften. “There’s nothing we can do but…get on with things. Concentrate on what’s in front of us instead of what’s behind us. Nothing we can do but that.”
Harry let out a long, resigned sigh. “It’s over now, anyway. I don’t have to be the Boy Who Lived anymore, thank god.”
Draco nodded and poured him another glass. “Good. But Potter? Please try to be the Boy Who Doesn’t Die Yet.”
“Why do you care? When the white flags go down we’ll be back to how we always are. Tomorrow morning we’ll deal with our hangovers in different countries and forget about the fact that we managed to say three words to each other without hexes flying around like nobodies business.”
Looking pained, Draco made his glass sing again. “Why does it have to be like that, Harry? We’re not eleven anymore.”
“It’s a long time to wipe out.”
“But we’ve had loved ones who’ve had everything wiped out in less than a second. Fuck. This can’t be as hard as that.”
Harry bit his lips. “No. It shouldn’t be.”
~
It was late, now. The fire had died down to warm red coals, and the bottles on the couch between them had all been taken away. Penny the house elf was bringing them coffee, now, not realising that they were just pouring large dollops of Irish Cream into the cups instead of milk.
“The problem with you Gryffindors,” Draco was proclaiming, waiving the coffee cup towards Harry, “Is that you just rush stupidly into things. No thought, no preparation, no idea about consequences. That’s why you need Slytherins to watch your bloody stupid backs. It’s always all or nothing with you lot.”
Green eyes swept up and down Draco, apprehensively coming to rest on the wavering cup. “In more ways than one.”
“What?”
Harry made a face, like he’s said something he hadn’t really wanted to and now had to explain it anyway. “I know what you mean, but it’s in more ways than you think. We - I - have got to have it all, or we won’t have any of it. We can’t have things half way, you know, because what would be the point?”
Draco looked uncertain. “What, you mean like…dinner. You can’t eat half a roast, you have to eat a bloody great big cow?”
“You’re daft, Malfoy,” Harry said decidedly and took the cup off him. “I’m not talking about dinner.”
Sobriety poured into Draco’s eyes. “O-kay. Oh.”
Angrily, Harry turned away. “So you see, Malfoy, we’ll definitely be having our hangovers in different countries tomorrow. Because I’m a bloody stupid Gryffindor, and you’re Draco Malfoy.”
Draco thought about this, thought about everything, coming to a very hazy conclusion. “No.”
“There is no ‘no’” Harry said tiredly, “You’ve got no idea…”
“No,” Draco repeated, more insistently, “This is bloody stupid, Potter-”
“Yes, we’ve established that.”
“-because it’s me, and you, and I’m sure we can manage to be friends, but…”
“But anything else is going too far? Yes, I know that Malfoy. I know that. Don’t think I haven’t thought about that. Every bloody day since we were eighteen.”
~
They’d gone to bed around three-thirty, stumbling into rooms next to each other because the house was too big and quiet and lonely when there was just two of them there. Harry was furious at himself, and furious at Draco, and furious at brandy-cognac-firewhiskey and all of Ireland for getting him to the point where he’d all but declared eternal love to a sodding Malfoy. He was too annoyed to be drunk, or annoyed because he was drunk, he wasn’t sure, and listened to Draco’s breathing from the next room instead of going to sleep.
Draco couldn’t sleep either, staring at the canopy over his bed as he replayed the night’s conversation over and over. He had to be drunk, he had to be missing something, because it sounded very much like Potter had said…had told him…had actually said that he… But that was stupid, because he was him, and he was Potter, which was just so life defining that he had to dwell on it for a while.
He was Potter.
~
Grey light barely edged the shadows as Harry opened his eyes, sleepily registering that it must be almost morning. A noise had woken him, and there it was again, footsteps coming closer to the edge of the bed. He started to sit up, but a pale hand reached out and caught him.
“Shhh…”
“Draco?”
“Yes.”
~
Moving together, softly, slowly, just testing each other to start with. A gentle touch, a quiet word, “yes?” and a whispered answer, “yes.”
~
“Tell me you mean it.”
“Shhh, Harry…”
“No, tell me you mean it!”
“I mean this.” A ghost of a kiss sliding down his cheek, starting at his cheekbone and making its way to his chin. Fingers tracing along his side, skirting a hip bone.
“Ohhhh, God, Draco…”
~
The shadows were being chased away as Draco latched his lips onto Harry’s collar bone and slid himself inside at the same time. Harry’s eyes were clenched shut, hands clutching desperately at Draco’s back as over and over he whispered “All of it, I want all of it, please Draco, all of it…” Draco gave it to him, driving in and out and gasping at the tight, wet heat of it all. Pleasure was racing through his body, almost crackling off his skin as he watched the face before him, slowly lit up by the rising sun. “Harry, Harry, come on, take it, take it, take it…”
~
The room burst into light as the sun finally rose and broke away from a heavy bank of clouds. Harry was screaming by now, Draco’s eyes still trained on him as he felt it come, now, now, now, and watched the echo of his pleasure in Harry’s face. Wetness exploded between them, and there was more wetness on Harry’s cheeks that Draco didn’t want to think about.
“Draco, Draco, stay with me, Draco, don’t go yet, please…”
Harry’s body smooth and firm pressed against him, cleaning spells forgotten as they melded together, Draco kissing the top of Harry’s head.
“I’m not leaving yet,” he murmured, “I’ve only just begun to see you in the light, Harry.”
~
Penny brought Draco a cup of coffee as he sat on the couch in front of a dead fire. He took it absently, still studying the note Harry had charmed to flutter above him until he woke.
Draco -
Gone back to Scotland. Will be at Hogwarts for the rest of the summer. Fell free to use Grimmauld place, for however long you need. And be careful with that hangover, Malfoy.
Harry.
Draco crumpled the note in his hand, tossing it into the fireplace. “Bloody stupid Gryffindor,” he muttered angrily, shaking his head. Flash of the night before, Harry moaning into Draco’s mouth, an image gone as quickly as it came.
“Your move,” he whispered. “All or nothing, Harry. All or nothing.”