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As the virtuous were rewarded with the sleep of the just, beneath the shroud of night that wrapped black wings around Hogwarts, two minds were alert, pondering a shared wakefulness amid so much slumber. It was as though the dormitory was filled with the dead, as the rippling sighs from white throats were mute in the heavy air, no sound coming from Harry’s friends even though they were scant feet away. The wind howled its demented chorus outside the window, lashing bullets onto the glass, the ground slowly freezing to the colour of the iron skies. Harry was warm in the middle of so much ice. And content. The wind did not bother him when it did not rend his skin with its claws, nor did the rain when it was outside his window. It was a rare moment that he felt safe, and such is the irony of safety that it is found sometimes in the most incongruent of places. In Draco Malfoy’s arms. Wrapped like one. Embalmed to his skin, Draco’s body was twined round him, through him, inside him; everywhere and nowhere at once because it was so strange and yet Harry could not have felt more secure. Entombed together as they were beneath the red and gold of the Gryffindor coverlet, closed in their woollen womb, the rest of the world seemed a thousand miles away. Harry watched Draco’s chest rising and falling. He had mapped it with his tongue, followed the distinct ridges to the line of silver hair, to an aching lust and a need recognised and met. It was smooth and flawless, that skin, that alabaster, stretched as it was over a cathedral of bone. Harry raised his mouth to touch Draco’s. It was warm and moved softly beneath his lips. He felt it smile and flitted his tongue over the sharp canine teeth and the soft palette, tasting the sweetness of tobacco and the bitterness of its pungent smoke. “Tomorrow everything goes back to normal,” Draco was saying. The sound of his voice sounded strangely remote to Harry’s ears, as though Draco were separated from him by some great distance. “Normality is relative.” “The normality of now is the threat of Voldemort and the disapproval of your friends.” “That’s the mundane.” “Are the two mutually exclusive?” “Hardly ever.” “Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow,” Draco muttered idly, and Harry felt his voice box vibrate in his neck. He kissed it and felt Draco shiver. “Everyone thinks about tomorrow. What if they died tonight?” “They’d stop thinking.” “Or they’d have an eternity of might-have-beens.” “Today I love you.” “Tomorrow you might not.” “Don’t think about that.” “I can’t help it,” Draco said, propping himself up on his elbows to regard Harry with a half-smirk. “I don’t want to forget or be forgotten.” Something in Harry stirred unpleasantly, like a snake coiled in the pit of his stomach, ready to strike. “Voldemort said that to me once,” he said, his blood running cold. “He said he didn’t want to be forgotten?” Draco’s silver brows knitted. “Before he vanished,” he said, “to wherever he is now.” Harry was feeling distinctly uneasy and the hairs on the back of his neck were prickling. Something was suddenly very wrong as his scar exploded with pain and he cried out, clutching his forehead, his vision swimming in and out of clarity. A moment of frantic greyness gave way to a deep, suffocating black that swallowed Harry whole. The pain in his head was blinding, as fervid an ache as at the moments Voldemort was inside his mind, the same blistering agony that came with the knowledge that evil was around him and choking him. He writhed like a snake in the unbearable heat, the howls of rage of the wind intensified until the castle was surrounded by a shrill song that battered the masonry and beat with fists at the very walls. Voldemort was here. Something was wrong. Harry was faintly sentient to Draco’s hands on his arms, but in his mind they were transformed to horrible claws, drawing blood that ran like the Nine rivers down his arm. His voice, asking what was wrong, was like a jagged knife in Harry’s ears and he couldn’t stand it any more, the pain in his scar, the snake inside him, the consciousness of evil. Harry opened his eyes. Draco was looking at him worriedly, pinning Harry by the arms, his nails leaving little half-moons in Harry’s skin. He was saying something, his mouth moving, distorting, the words never reaching Harry’s ears. Then Harry’s blood froze in his veins. Draco was changing, moving in and out of focus, fading to the colour of nothingness before lancing towards Harry with red brilliance. Harry was shaking horribly as Draco’s pointed, pale face hardened, his cheekbones stood razor sharp, his hair shortened to a tousle of brown and his eyes narrowed into the slits of a snake. Suddenly the arms around him belonged to no-one and the warm body next to him was that of another. Harry had seen him in a memory and in his nightmares. Tom Riddle lay next to Harry. Draco had vanished, changed into another sixteen year old boy that had given his life to evil. Voldemort had returned to England, found his form once more and his way into Harry’s life. Polyjuice, it had to be polyjuice. Harry let out a scream that was silenced by the spell. Riddle smiled at him, his nails digging deeper into Harry’s arms, biting him, rending his flesh and clawing non-stop at Harry’s mouth. “Potter,” he said. “Potter.” Harry’s hands scrambled for something that might help him. They knocked his glasses from the bedside table, the jug shattered in an arc of glistening water and books and quills went flying. It was then that his fingers closed around the cold shaft of Sirius’s knife. Tom was on his skin, scratching and seeking to pinion Harry, smiling like a maniac, black eyes melting. Polyjuice, polyjuice, polyjuice, polyjuice. Harry forced his elbow into Tom’s neck, making his choke, before taking the knife and sliding it roughly between his ribs. Warm, wet blood exploded from the wound as Harry hacked until he reached bone. He was drenched in it, the crimson staining his eyes red, the blood pooling and spurting, warming his hands and drowning him in its vivid redness. He had expected Tom Riddle to bleed a venomous green but it was not the case. The arms around him slackened as the piercing scream ripped through the air and chilled Harry further. He jerked the knife upwards in a haphazard gash that freed flesh and brought him to completion. Harry’s arms shook controllably as the snake eyes before him dulled and the weak heartbeat stopped. The blood continued to flow. Harry breathed hard and fast through his nose. The silencing spell around his bed meant that the rest of the dormitory was still asleep. The wind had quieted and the rain had stilled. The world waited with bated breath for the next move of this murderer, this blood-drenched hero. This naked boy stained with red and soiled with the life of his enemy. Destined for madness. Harry waited until he had stopped shaking before he opened his eyes. The blood around him was beginning to dry but yet it still poured forth from the corpse atop him, soaking him until he could taste its metallic tang. Tom was dead. He’d done it. It had been so simple. Polyjuice with a single of Draco’s hairs had granted him entrance and Voldemort had had Harry at his most vulnerable, but Harry had triumphed. The battle was won, the enemy was defeated. Harry had fulfilled his duty, his life no longer had meaning. Something about this made him sad. He cradled the chassis of Tom Riddle to his bloodstained chest, before brushing back silver hair, closing arctic grey eyes with his fingertips without realising what he was doing. Harry looked at the face before him and vomited over the side of his bed. Draco lay dead, in his arms. *** There was a brightness behind his closed eyelids so that they looked red. The brightness that came from artificial light. Harry opened his eyes blearily and looked around. Whiteness and brightness and light. The grey was gone and the shadows dispersed. A snowy perfection constructed walls around him, a ceiling above his head, curtains before him and sheets beneath him. He was surrounded by a clinical meticulousness and it took a minute or two for him to get his bearings. He was in some kind of ward. A flash of recognition flickered through his dazed mind as he realises where he was. He was in St. Mungo’s Hospital for Magical Maladies. “Feeling better?” That drawl, so familiar, so beloved echoed in his ears as though from a thousand miles away. Harry’s head snapped briskly to his left, where Draco was sitting, feet on Harry’s bed, smiling softly. A hundred images flooded Harry’s mind in the next second. Blood, Draco, Tom, Rain, Wind, Gryffindor Tower, Knife, Struggle, Draco, Blood. “What happened?” Harry asked, trembling slightly as he tried to sit up. That night seemed as though it were an age ago, and all Harry could remember was the bone-crushing terror that had stilled his every breath and broken his soul. “Why am I here?” “Nightmares,” Draco said simply, fixing Harry with his grey eyes. “You were having hallucinations back at Hogwarts and you were brought here because Madam Pomfrey could do no more to alleviate them.” “That night…” Harry said with difficulty, looking up at Draco with a frightened flutter in his chest. “Was a nightmare,” Draco finished soothingly. “It was a nightmare, Harry.” Harry thought his heart would explode with relief, and he sank down onto the bed again, feeling wave after wave of exhaustion. “Thank God,” he said, and Draco smiled at him again. “I have to go in a minute,” he said. “Why?” Harry asked. “Things to do,” Draco replied, standing up and leaning over Harry as though he were going to kiss him. “I love you,” Harry said quietly, feeling a sense of contentment permeate his troubled mind. “I know you do,” Draco said, a little sadly. The curtains around the bed were suddenly slid open and a fat, jovial woman with tight red curls around her heavily made up face wheeled a trolley through. “Well, well Mr Potter,” she said with a grin. “I see you’re awake.” “Yes,” Harry said dazedly. Draco hadn’t moved. “Time to take your potion,” she said, ladling out an acid green mixture from her portable cauldron. “Draco,” Harry said, turning to where the blond stood next to him. Draco was smiling again, but this time there was something cold about it, something sinister and heartbreaking. “What’s that dear?” the nurse said, bustling forward. She leant over Harry and fussed with his bed-clothes and Harry felt his heart stop beating in his chest. She had passed straight through Draco. Harry started shaking uncontrollably again, his eyes fixed on the Slytherin through whom the nurse had moved. “Goodbye, Harry,” Draco said and straightened up. Bloodstains ran the length of his torso, blossoming through his clothes, leaving the stain of death upon him. |
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