Harry Potter - fight
HP - fight
Inspired by listening to Incubus, ‘Megalomaniac’, though I’d wanted to write a fight for some time. this will go into Portraits of a Lion and a Snake, Entwined.
*
A blond man sits on a comfortable green sofa facing a fireplace. But for a window somewhere off-screen, the merrily crackling fire is the only light in the room. The man is staring at a newspaper headline: POTTER TO TESTIFY AT MALFOY TRIAL!
The man folds the paper and casts it aside. It slides on the small table beside the couch and comes to a precarious stop on one hexagonal edge. The headline’s moving picture is of a blond man who looks eerily familiar. He is being escorted somewhere by two men in black robes. Though he wears the look of one used to special treatment in the prideful slant of his eyebrows, the man himself is bedraggled.
The blond sitting on the couch puts his head in one hand. He is quiet. He is still.
From outside the slowly darkening room there sounds a pop! and a thump. Someone has Apparated in. The blond suddenly removes his hand and sits up straight. He slumps into the couch, affecting nonchalance.
“Draco,” mouths the man coming in, though we cannot hear it. He casually tosses his robe onto the armchair beside the couch and goes to the blond man.
The blond man speaks, though we cannot see his mouth. The man who came in stops short: he has seen the newspaper folded on its side. His mouth opens but nothing comes out of it. He looks sad and pathetic with his messy brown hair, glasses askew and taped in the middle, broad shoulders out of place on his wiry body. The name is mouthed again, “Draco,” but the man on the couch ignores it and crosses his arms.
He turns his head to the side and spits a name, “Potter,” and words pour from his mouth faster than can be read. He stands and paces.
The word “father” is shouted.
Things start shaking, though no wands are present. A red light glows from the blond’s body and fingertips. The brunet puts out a hand in supplication, but there is nothing for it. Words are slung back and forth like rocks. China breaks on the mantle and bookends leap from the shelves and crack upon the floor where there is no rug to catch them.
Then the brunet says “monster” and everything stops. For a moment everything is perfectly still. Then objects are leaping into the blond’s hands, and he hurls them himself: a vase full of fresh flowers, a statuette of a griffin entwined with a snake, a box of jewelry, the newspaper. The blond’s hair is wild and his face is blotched white and red. The angry scowl on his face would seem etched in stone but for the rapid movement of his red, red mouth.
The brunet dodges with natural magic and raised arms, inching forward with each thing thrown as books leap from the shelves behind him to hurl themselves at his back. Finally he grabs the blond’s arms and twists him around. The blond winces in pain, but never stops fighting. The brunet kicks the blond’s legs out from under him. Both fall to the floor. They scrabble for dominance, rolling into a coffee table and the couch, bloodying their hands on furniture and fingernails.
The brunet winds up straddling the blond’s chest. He holds the blond’s wrists over his head. The blond’s face is streaked with tears. He is crying so heavily his words are unintelligible from his sobs.
The brunet leans over him, bringing his mouth so close their lips almost touch. He is talking softly. Perhaps he is apologizing, perhaps he is making excuses, perhaps he is saying the cruelest of things. The blond fights him off futilely and then gives up, wilting into the floor like a flower crushed for its fragrance.
The brunet puts his face into the blond’s neck and just breathes. They remain this way for silent minutes.
Then the brunet stands, draws his cloak over his arm, and, looking back one last time, walks out of the room.
Like a bird breathing its last, the man on the floor curls up into a shuddering ball. He stills. He shakes. He cries.