Rating: PG (OH GOD, this is rated PG...)
Summary: Faced with a terrible truth, Draco tries to avoid falling apart. It's fluff and angst intertwined to form a... thing.
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.
Notes: Some of the characters in this fic belong to me, some
don't. I'm sure you're perfectly capable of knowing which is which. I wanted to participate... here goes nothing. >_<
It's not true. It's not true. Draco repeated this with mechanical
fervour. Each time the words, muttered and strained, crawled off his
tongue he hoped to prompt a revelation that would allow him to
actually believe what he was saying. He stared down at his mothers
usually sprawling elegant script and noted that it had been reduced
to a wobbly string of words that followed no rules of any kind, as
was evident by the lack of punctuation, grammar, and the presence of
several words huddled together without spaces, as if they lacked the
strength to stand apart.
A Malfoy still bleeds. Yet he could not allow himself to place his
faith in the contents of the letter. There had to be an alternate
explanation – a dream, a hallucination, a short stint with an
alternate reality. He made a mental note to refrain from drinking
pumpkin juice before bed. No matter what the case, Draco affirmed
that nothing less than the tragic aftermath of a horrible mistake had
befallen him. Some other Lucius Malfoy had met with an untimely
demise, and some other Draco Malfoy, probably on the other side of
the world, was the one who was going to have to deal with that.
If only.
Receiving the Owl Post was usually the highlight of his day. Sweets
from home, trinkets from foreign countries, little bits of love
wrapped in blatant materialism, these were offered to him in
accordance with a family tradition that dated back as far as anyone
could remember. Emotions were designated for the weak; that much was
common knowledge to the early Malfoys, but still they craved means of
expressing their affection for one another without having to endure
the creeping sense of vulnerability. And so an emotional exchange
was born whose cover was the perpetual gifting of an endless
assortment of objects. This behaviour became the norm, and anyone
wishing to communicate their feelings would invest in a pricey symbol
of affection bound to invoke twinkling eyes and a pounding heart.
But today, Draco had received nothing but a letter. After glancing
over it, he wandered from the castle in a daze, finding his way
outside and to the edge of Hogwarts Lake. It never occurred to him
to stay among his peers, seeking comfort in pity stares and half-
hearted words designed to make him feel better. So sorry for your
loss, blah, blah, blah. Besides, all of that would entail projecting
a sense of vulnerability, which of course was never an item on his
agenda.
It's not true.
It's just not true.
There was, however, one person who he may consider sharing his
predicament with, one Harry Potter who was almost always perpetually
present in his life. So much time had been wasted pretending to hate
each other. Now those years were looked upon as foreplay. But even
then, he loved Harry, yet he could not allow the boy to see him in
such a state. That would involve letting his guard down, and that was
not something he was willing to consider.
Scowling vehemently as he reminded himself to continue breathing,
Draco kicked at the muddy shore, forgetting to care about the dark
globs on the legs of his trousers.
Once wrapped in white, the land had been peaceful and bright. Now
spring was in session and the snow was assaulted with piercing solar
rays, revoking its frozen status in favour of a ruthless melting
spree. The result was a bare, lifeless example of desolation.
Haggard and yellow, the grass was slowly awakening from its slumber,
yet still too embittered by the sudden change of season to show any
signs of life. Fields of soft ivory coloured snowflakes were torn
away and replaced with the revolting spectacle of a land that has
lost everything. Even the seeds kept their heads tugged firmly
beneath the ground, fearing the unknown world that lurked above
them. The comforting gnaw in the frigid air was torn down and
replaced with a sickly muggy scent, a thick putrescent mixture that
made everything smell wet and rotten.
Dark rain clouds loomed like angry giants in the sky and a gentle
boom sounded in the distance. A trickle of rain poured down from
above. Calm at first, the drops grew steadily more intense until the
rain pounded down so furiously that Draco could barely make out his
surroundings.
Sighing deeply, he bent forward and placed his hands on his knees to
steady himself. Like deadly tentacles arising from the deep, his
pain was wound around his body, suffocating him. His fist tightened
around the wad of crumpled parchment. The paper, grasped tightly in
his hand dripped ink and rain that stained the grass when it came
splashed against the withered blades.
His robes grew heavy with water, and as if that had been the final
weight that he was able to bare, he was on his knees, mindless to the
mud that would later on by a source of both physical and emotional
annoyance. Head bowed low to the ground he placed his palms against
the ground and clawed at the earth.
The rain created tiny ripples in the water and wispy swirls in the
mud. Draco stayed still as glass, tendrils of his blond hair dancing
across the mud surface, and forced the air into his lungs. The back
of his throat seemed plagued with an invisible wad of cotton, like an
emotional choke-hold seizing him by the neck and refusing to allow
him to give in to the hurt, which now was all too real and much more
difficult to deny. There was the torrential desire to let go and do
what his heart demanded by permitting himself to fall apart, or to
continue keeping it under lock and key, instead creating a series of
emotional floatation devices to prevent him from going under.
Wet, cold, and shaking against the earth, it came as quite a shock to
feel warm fingertips playing across the back of his neck and he
quickly tightened his resolve when a soft voice sounded against the
pounding of the rain. "I've been looking all over for you…What's
wrong?"
Harry Potter. Fully recognizable by touch alone, let alone sound.
"Oh, just…" Draco muttered, biting his bottom lip. There were words
enough to describe the situation, but none of them were readily
available to him. Even if he could have told Harry what was wrong,
he didn't think it would have been easy. But this… he couldn't even
begin to explain himself. Repeating the contents of the letter aloud
would make it real, and he couldn't allow that to happen.
"Just what?" asked Harry, bending down and reaching for Draco's
hand. "Get up you silly git. You're going to be up all night
hacking your bloody lungs out in the hospital wing and guess who's
going to be stuck entertaining you, not to mention catching your
germs."
"I don't have germs," mumbled Draco, wearily accepting Harry's hand
and using the other boy's weight in order to pull himself to his feet.
Harry sighed and wound his arms around the Slytherin's waist. He
brushed his lips against Draco's cheek, drawing tiny circles with his
tongue and pulling the other boy as close as he they could get
without their bodies amalgamating. "C'mon, Draco, what's the matter
with you?"
Claws tearing at his throat, an intense pounding right between his
eyes, and a horrific sense of uneasiness in the pit of his stomach,
Draco locked Harry in a tight embrace. He touched the side of
Harry's face with his hand and kissed his jaw-line. "Harry, my
father's name is no longer accessible to me as a means of threatening
the incompetent fools I'm faced with on a daily basis."
"Why's that?" asked Harry, smirking slyly. "Has he gone soft?"
Draco managed a slight smile. The thought of his father going soft
was as unlikely as it was amusing to imagine. "No, he's just gone."
He would have asked "gone where?" but look of sorrow imprinted firmly
upon Draco's face provided him with an answer sufficient enough for
him to bite his tongue in time. Instead he refrained from speech of
any kind, and raised his hand, softly brushing the hair out of
Draco's eyes and dampening his fingers with the cool raindrops.
Harry sighed as Draco became heavy in his arms. It hurt knowing
Draco was in pain and feeling utterly incapable of doing anything to
help. This was not a wound that he could kiss better. Even if it
had been, Draco would have denied him access, preferring to huddle
sulking in the corner until the damage was healed. But he could
still stand there, water assaulting them from above, drowning the
land further, strengthening the odour of decaying matter long hidden
from view, trying desperately to bring back the butterflies and the
blossoms.
Draco caressed the warmth of Harry's neck with the tips of his
fingers. Rain flowed down both their faces like hurried tears. And
when his strength broke, the droplets offered a most masterful
disguise to hide his pain.
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