Wild Blackberries
by hey citrus
Every day he walks through fields, through woods and along riverbanks.
He walks alone, without magic. He feels like the curator of nature. He has marked the summer's slow progress: the lengthening and seeding of grass; the toughening of tender green leaves. He has watched ducklings and goslings shed their fluff; has seen ponds flood and dry up to sickly reed bowls as the weather cycles through storm and drought.
He sees Harry in ants' nests and birds' nests, thunder and dust.
He feels Harry in the sharp sting of nettles and the icy shock of stream on bare feet.
*
If he is the curator of nature, surely he is the curator of men too; and this protective thought comforts him, means he no longer feels the loss of Harry like a death.
Harry is with him always; his constant presence is what allows Draco to embrace all of this. He feels both kingly and humbled as he wanders through densely-canopied woodland, gazing up with wonder at the sunlight-splintered green.
Without Harry; without having loved Harry, Draco would never have had this epiphany; that his heart is big enough to hold trees and rivers and fields and sky and sun.
*
He has marked the progress of the brambles too. He has watched as they flowered white; pushed out tiny, hard green berry-nubs. He has watched as the berries swelled and blushed red, and finally darkened with finger-staining purple juice.
Every day he eats a single berry. Struggles through arm-scratching, robe-catching tall bramble bushes to pluck down the fattest, blackest berry. Places it solemnly on his tongue; with hope and silent prayer.
Every day, his face has lemon-puckered at the berry's under-ripe sourness.
But today, the fruit yields perfect soft-sweetness, and it is like a secret, sacred gift from the summer.
*
The taste of the one sweet berry; the heaviness of the air as the low, purple-black summer storm clouds weigh down; the earthy grass-smell as fat, warm globes of rain start to spot the ground. All of this would have been unbearably sad to Draco in his loss.
But Harry was no longer missing.
He was the sweetness that nourished Draco; he was the storm that ended Draco's drought and cleansed his soul.
He was the summer; the endlessly giving, eternal summer which would last long after the berries had rotted and been absorbed back into the forgiving earth below.