Title: Winter
Author: kai
(kai_z@operamail.com)
Summary: War is hell.
Rating: PG-13. Depressing/character death
Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers
including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made
and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
The world was white, a thin crust of tears upon newly fallen snow, and every now
and again a sharp crack sounded when a branch snapped under the weight of its
load.
Hood pulled up and gloved hands tucked under his arms, Harry leaned against a
gnarled oak at the edge of the clearing. The trees offered a bit of protection
from the wind. Even so, his breath steamed and stung. Behind him, in the
distance and just visible through the trees were he to turn and look, stood the
remaining towers of Hogwarts. At his feet lay the snow-covered, unmarked grave
of--someone very dear.
One year, two months, fourteen days, and still the wound had not healed.
He carried no tokens to offer his dead, no never-fading flowers or silly bits of
poetry, not even the gift of his tears. Today, he brought only himself,
unadorned. Green eyes, unruly hair, broad shouldered now but still under-sized
and lean, marked by the scar that proclaimed him something other than what he
knew himself to be: The Boy Who Lived.
Draco would have approved.
He hadn't cared much for "overt displays of sentiment" anyway, unless
accompanied by a pack or two of unfiltered cigarettes. "Filthy habit, I agree,"
Draco would say, taking a long, eloquent drag. "But damned necessary." And
Harry, who understood necessary things, had never complained about the smoke or
the dark taste on Draco's fingertips, lips, and tongue.
On a long ago spring night, they had embraced beside this very tree just outside
the castle wards: enemies turned allies then lovers, war banner for the Light
and unacknowledged spy. In those days, the old war still raged, the new war had
not begun, and Lucius had yet to steal spring, summer, and autumn, leaving
Europe shrouded in a year-long freeze.
"What do you need?" Harry had asked that night. After a moment Draco had pressed
his nose into Harry's hair and said, "Just you." Not money, power, nor
privilege, no, having had those and rejected them, he merely wanted Harry and
nothing more. Astonishing.
One final, lingering kiss, then Draco had walked swiftly into the forest without
looking back. Away and back to Voldemort's citadel.
Back to the deadly game that he and Snape had played...and lost.
A large crow winged overhead then stooped upon a nearby branch. It shattered the
silence with a loud caw caw. "Too late. Too late," it seemed to say. Harry
agreed: a few short months, a few stolen hours in seedy inns in the midst of a
war. Not much to balance out nine years of enmity, nor much upon which to build
a future, though he and Draco had sometimes pretended that it might be so.
They'd sprawl, sweaty and sated, in a shabby bed in an anonymous town, staring
at the ceiling through a bluish haze of cigarette smoke and imagine when. When
Voldemort was defeated, when Lucius had come to his senses, when the war was
over, when the whole damn world was back to normal.
Any one or all of those things might yet occur, but their when, their
hard-fought, "soppy Gryffindor happily-ever-after" when would never ever come.
He had Dumbledore, amongst so many others, to thank for that.
The bird cawed again and Harry narrowed his eyes; it seemed overly large. If it
was another damned unregistered animagus sent to keep watch--"Mind, it's for
your own good, Harry"--he'd hex it, pluck it, and leave whomever to crawl back
to Hogwarts naked.
He was reaching for his wand when the wards at his back tingled twice and a
shadow crossed the edge of his vision. Dressed like Harry in winter gray,
bundled against the cold, the pale man haunted the edge of the clearing keeping
close to the trees.
Ah yes, Draco's failed protector; sudden heat blossomed in Harry's chest.
He straightened from his slouch, clenching his wand with his fist. "Go away,
Snape. You don't belong here."
The tall, hooded figure paused, maimed left hand cradled to his chest, then
drifted back into the trees without comment or sound. A third prickle of the
wards heralded his departure.
"That was not kindly done." Albus Dumbledore moved to stand at Harry's shoulder.
His worn voice carried easily in the stillness.
"You finally broke your pet Snape, Albus." Harry snapped off each word as if
pruning icicles from a roof gutter. "If you weren't careful with your toy, why
should I bother?"
Dumbledore inhaled sharply. "Harry."
Once, he might have been cowed by the flash of steel behind those quiet words,
but never again. Harry said nothing; had adequate words even been invented?
"Severus has as much right to be here as you. Or me."
"As much right," Harry echoed bitterly. Voldemort had feared Dumdledore, and
wisely so, if tales of Albus' skill were to be believed. Still, Harry toyed with
his wand and wondered, not for the first time, if youth and speed might not
sometimes trump age and experience. "Yes, I know all about rights and
responsibilities. And duty. You saw to that."
"Then you also know that you're being unreasonable. Curse me if you must, but
Severus is not to blame."
Reason be damned! Harry spun to face his former mentor, rage burning through the
ice in his blood. "Spare me the rest of the speech, Headmaster. Mistakes were
made, lives were lost, we each did our best, war is hell, and all that. There's
more than enough blame to go around, I think, though none of it and nothing will
help Draco now, will it?"
To his credit, Dumbledore didn't flinch; he looked old and sad.
Harry held his eyes for a moment then circled Draco's grave and stalked across
the clearing, back towards the school.
"And call off your spies." He turned and pointed his wand at the crow. The bird
took flight, squawking, as he hexed its branch into splinters. "I don't like
being watched."
Back inside the wards, Harry paused and leaned against another oak, panting.
Draco had never looked back, but Harry couldn't seem to resist. Through the
silhouettes of the trees he saw Albus kneeling, fingers clenched in the snow.
The glitter on the old man's lined cheeks might well have been genuine tears.
Harry couldn't bring himself to care.
Finis.
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