Seeing In Color: Shades of Grey
Disclaimer: Okay, I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully—I do not, have not, will not ever in the foreseeable future, own Harry Potter. Got it? Good. God. At last.
A/N: Hmm…how do you like this one? It's a bit different from my normal style…or maybe not, since I have no style in particular, except loads and loads of angst…See, I felt guilty for neglecting you guys, so here ya go…and my muse was yelling at me because I was too lazy to do anything but read other people's fanfiction, and she's a real b when she's mad…
Draco tends not to see in color anymore. It's easier not to, really, especially since there is so little color in the world, and if you still see in color vision, then the little bursts of color leap out at you, burning your eyes, searing your corneas and leaving the vision of the little splash of brightness imprinted on the insides of your retinas, so that long after it should have been buried and forgotten, it shakes your world of grey and turns it upside down. And long after it should have faded from memory, you find yourself longing for that difference in your mundane routine.
And longing is dangerous. It makes you feel.
So he sees in black and white, shades of grey falling across the plane of his vision, black and steel-grey and iron-grey and pale grey and metallic grey and dirty-white and white spreading their insidious fingers throughout the world, threading their way into Granger's face as she sits at the table in the Great Hall with yet another heavy tome for research, and winding their way around the corridors of Hogwarts, the new stronghold and headquarters for the Order of the Phoenix and the Light side.
War tends to do that to you.
"Draco?" (Bushy hair all chopped off when her pet Weasel died, chopped in different lengths now in a Muggle something that she calls a 'layer cut,' different shades of grey for each spiky layer of straightened hair)
"Hmmm?" he asks noncommittally because in the war you never commit to anything until you know what it is because what if it is something hard and the one thing you don't want is extra work because you're all so damn tired, and all you want is to sleep, sleep until your eyelids are permanently seared shut and your hair is beyond recovery and every little empty hollow and crevice in your body is filled to the brim and replete with sleep, and, impossible as it seems, you are no longer tired.
Tired? Has he ever been not tired? Draco can't seem to remember, and for a moment he spares some part of himself to imagine not being tired, but finds that he can't.
War tends to do that to you.
With an effort he jerks his attention back to her, but even as he does so he sends his consciousness out, seeking and probing the area for any new magical signatures, something that has become second nature to all fighters, Light and Dark, something unable to turn off even though you wish you could because every time someone comes near you you start. Permanent radar.
And Granger is still talking, so he focuses his attention on her yet again.
"Harry wants to see you."
Ah yes, Potter. Vaguely he remembers that Potter had brilliant green eyes (the color of Lily's eyes, Severus had once said on those rare occasions when the bitter man could let down his guard), and at one time, they were one of the few colorful things in his life.
Not anymore. Now they were a brilliant grey, metallic and intense and vivid and almost, almost a color, but not quite. Not quite.
Potter with the messy black hair (black like night like dark, funny how the Saviour of the Light has hair like Dark like night like black and the Poster Boy of Dark has hair like Light like day like blond) and crooked smile and the helpless spread of his hands that tells you he has absolutely no idea what he is doing but isn't this fun and do you want to come along for the ride?
And part of Draco hates that their captain is such an irresponsible git and confused little brat who plays with his clothes even though he is seventeen and treats this like it's all a game, but part of him loves it, because if Potter loses hope than what is left really to have hope in? If Potter can smile even after a boy died right in his arms when he was fourteen and his godfather died when he was fifteen and his mentor was killed by their spy to keep his cover, under his mentor's own orders, when he was sixteen, and he let the accomplice in his ranks (Draco himself, how ironic to think of himself as the accomplice, or should it be the instigator), then maybe they can win this fucking war after all.
"Draco?" Fuck. Now Granger is staring at him. Vaguely he remembers a time when he tried not to curse, when his father told him to reserve it for special occasions, so that when he did have to resort to such strong language, people would pay attention, and his mother would sigh and shake her head and look wistful and just ask him to please, please, try not to and one day he would understand, and he would feel rather ashamed of himself everytime afterwards.
Now he no longer feels anything except coldness, so it doesn't matter anymore, and he is as careless of his language as he is of everything else.
He raises his eyebrows.
"Are you coming or not?" she asks again, a little impatiently, tapping her foot just a little and scrunching up her bit of skin between her eyebrows.
Nodding, he falls into step beside her as they make their way through the Great Hall. Everyone is silent, and for a moment he remembers another time when everyone was silent when he made his way up here. But no, this is different. This time, everyone is silent, not out of surprise, but out of uncaring.
Funny. He remembers when this place was full of chatter, with girls gossiping about the latest whatever it was and the blokes discussing—he would not say gossiping—the latest Quidditch matches. Faintly he thinks that he might remember himself discussing things like that.
Not anymore. Parvati Patil has fallen silent since her twin died. Lavendar Brown has lost an eye and a hand, her beauty marred, and she sits unmoving and unresponsive to any form of chatter, just receives her orders, does her job, and returns to her position against the wall of the Gryffindor dorm or the Great Hall, staring into space. Susan Bones of Hufflepuff is pregnant with her rapist's baby, the result of an unfortunate encounter with the Death Eater Evan Rosier. Draco has caught her staring at her swollen baby with a look of pure hatred on her face, but she cannot bring herself to kill it.
Mandy Brocklehurst of Ravenclaw counts stones in the wall. She is the only one who can cast Crucio of the magnitude of Voldemort and keep it there for longer than fifteen minutes. Neville Longbottom is fit and muscled now, if a bit stocky, and his eyes are dead while he tortures his victims with flesh-eating vines of his own invention.
Harry Potter, Boy-Who-Lived-Only-To-Die-Inside (which is just as bad Draco thinks when he sees the crooked smile that used to be straight or was it always crooked but something is changed about it, broken, and those vivid eyes that used to be green are vivid with something else, something that scares Draco, and whose laughter rings empty or does it), deals with it by acting reckless and playing with their lives like a bloody devil-may-dare in something Draco pretends is life but which we all know is just a need to escape the demons that haunt him.
And Draco Malfoy stares into space and sees the world in shades of grey. We all deal with the war in different ways, but no matter what, it changes us, and always for the worse.
No longer are we children.
Were we ever?
War tends to do that to you.
He sneaks a glance at Granger, who is striding along beside him. Funny how we all stride now. Pansy Parkinson used to sway, swing her hips seductively and walk in a sort of luring dance. She doesn't have any hips now—all her bones were crushed when a room collapsed during a battle and she was the only survivor and now she is shapeless (remember a playful little slut who was a slut and liked being a slut with a big tits and shapely hips and a curvy form with pert red lips and an upturned nose who clings to your arms and whines just for the hell of it she loved annoying people) and no longer wears pretty robes and refuses to look in a mirror. She joined the Light side and was destroyed for it.
Hannah Abbot used to bounce along. Justin Finch-Fletchley used to scamper along. Colin Creevey jumped up and down on the balls of his feet to take Potter's picture.
We all stride now.
But then again, Granger always strode everywhere, her gait business-like and all. Always had somewhere to go, something to do. Idly he wonders if she ever just ran and ran and ran and ran, just for the hell of it, just for the sheer joy of running or walking or flying or whatever. And then because this is war and if you have a question you don't know if you'll be alive the next day to ask it, or the other will be alive the next day to answer it, he asks her, randomly.
"Did you ever walk or run or fly or whatever just because? Just because you wanted to, just because you felt like it, just because you had absolutely nowhere to go and that was the way you wanted it?"
And because it is war, she doesn't bat an eyelash but answers the question.
"Driving."
"What?" he asks, startled.
"Car. We had a car." Her voice is quiet, and he remembers that her parents were killed in one of those random Muggle raids (but it wasn't so random for those Muggles was it? Or for Granger was it? Asks a voice in his head shut up he tells it but it doesn't listen).
He keeps silent the way he knows he should because instinct is so rampant in everyone these days.
"One day I just took the car out for the hell of it, like you said. Have you ever gone driving really fast with all the windows down and the roof rolled back? It's an amazing feeling. The wind rushes past your ears and your hair flies everywhere and it brushes your skin like so many kisses."
He looks sharply at her; cuts his eyes; does a double take. Her voice is dead, like his, like Potter's, like everyone's nowadays—but surely this is too important a subject to be dead on? (Colin Creevey's voice passionate and excited and bubbling over with life as he describes the latest wizard camera that came out despite the war and shows the wonders of technology to anyone who bothers to listen which is no one but he doesn't care, then the alarm sounds and his voice is dead again)
"That was the day my parents died."
Oh. He thinks absently that he should feel sorry, feel sympathy, feel something either than this emptiness inside of him, but he does not, can not. And he looks apologetically at her, and she nods very slightly, a mute admission of forgiveness and recognition, from one insane person to another.
Because they're all insane now, one way or another. We all are.
War tends to do that to you.
Draco falls silent as he strides alongside her, because he has asked his question and received his answer. It was a gift, a part of herself, and he appreciated that and took it for what it was—a present, the only present she could give (no more shiny wrapping paper and velvety ribbons from Mum and Dad, Mum and Dad are all wrapped up in dull cloth and put away somewhere he can't find them) and this silence, this lack of pushing, was his thanks.
They lived by a strange code, these people, a strange and a necessary code, because if there was no code, then there was nothing separating them from the total abyss that is utter and complete insanity. Being insane is one thing. Being insane is another. Everyone has been insane at one time or another, that utter complete losing yourself to the Pit within.
At least that is what Draco calls it. The Pit, because it is a Pit, or perhaps the Abyss. At first he only saw in shades of grey when he was inside the Pit, but now he is always inside the Pit, and so he sees it all in black and white and grey. The Abyss is deeper still, but for now he manages to hover above it, only dipping in for brief periods of time, always managing to struggle out of it again. He knows that the day will come when he succumbs entirely and gives himself over to the Abyss, but before then he wishes to take down as many with him as possible.
"Draco?" Granger speaks, her 'layer cut' hair settling around her shoulders at an odd angle, and he realizes with an odd jolt that he likes her hair cut this way. It looks—how does it look? Sexy, he thinks, and remembers a time when he could think of things like that (girls dressed in leather or tight denim, and he watches their hips shake and thinks, I'd like a piece of that) and tries to remember what it felt like to be able to be distracted by girls or sex. He can't.
Pleasure is alien to him now, and he can no more conceive the concept of sexy than that of sweet, or warm, or nice. Everything is cold cold cold and grey grey grey and tired tired tired.
Still, he can at least recognize that it is sexy, and that is an accomplishment and he smiles, proud of himself, before he remembers that Granger is still talking, and that he should listen.
"You're staring at my hair." It was both a statement and a question.
"Yes…" he said absently, almost dreamily.
"You like the color, huh? I know it's weird, but I like bright purple, and well….yeah, I thought, what the hell, it's the War and all…"
The War. Those two words the mantra for everything. Did you have to go sleep with him? It's the War. Did you have to go away for three days and worry the hell out of all the rest of us? It's the War. Did you have to kill yourself? Dead eyes say it's the War.
But he doesn't understand. "What do you mean purple?"
She gives him a funny look. "My hair. I dyed it purple."
"What's purple?"
Her eyes narrow. "Malfoy, this isn't funny."
He gives her a blank look in exchange for the funny one.
"The color? Hello? Purple?"
"What color?" he asks, and that's when she gasps and her eyes widen and if it wasn't so bloody pathetic he'd laugh. Always knew she was the smartest out of the damn Trio, not that it would be so hard to be the smartest, but she beat him on the NEWTS. Of course by then the whole world was upside down and the War had begun so the NEWTs didn't matter shit, but still—she had beat him.
He gives her the salute of respect just thinking about it, and she does not question the upward flick of his fingers, the old pureblood ritual, or bat an eye, though she has to know what he meant by it, smart as she is. They do not question each other. They yell at each other and cuss at each other and snarl at each other, but the code of the insane and the code of the War dictate that they leave well enough alone.
"Grey," she says almost dreamily. "You see in shades of grey, don't you? That's your Tankkutu."
He doesn't ask her what she meant by Tankkutu. It is her word; if she wants to share it, she will, but Draco knows how personal your words could be.
"Yeah," he says. "Only you make it sound a lot prettier than it really is."
She smiles suddenly. "What's it like to be color blind?" she asks inquisitively, leaning forward, legs crossed, one heel dangling and her arms propping her up from the desk—when the hell have they ended up in one of the deserted classrooms? Draco finds himself leaning forward against a chair back, running a hand through his hair.
It seems personal somehow, but she had given part of herself to him, and he can do no less for her. Give and take, he thought. Give and take. So he gathers his scattered thoughts as best as he can and begins speaking, slowly.
"It's—I feel like you're asking a man who's been blind from birth what it's like to live in darkness. I don't really remember what it's like to see in color—don't remember what color is, don't remember what it's like to see anything besides black and white and grey. You said your hair was purple, but I don't know what purple is. I don't miss it, not really. Black is underrated, you know. And white. And grey."
She raises her eyebrows, and he finds himself taken by the curve of the light grey line, set at a rather comical angular slant.
"I mean, people say grey is depressing, but there's so many shades. There's silver grey—"
"Like your eyes," Hermione murmurs, and he blushes.
"And iron grey, and steel grey, and a dull matte sort of grey, and a soft moon-white sort of grey, and a dark and darker grey that's almost black but not quite, and grey that looks like white at first glance but isn't, you know?
"So many kinds of grey…" he murmurs, then smiles. "Nobody appreciates grey," he says almost pouting.
Despite herself, Hermione laughs at this, then pauses, startled at herself. The sound of her laughter echoes through the still and silent air as though the very walls are surprised at the unexpected sound of merriment in this godforsaken place. Draco is staring at her, staring at the walls, imbibing and absorbing the first sound of joy that he has heard for so long. Not cracked laughter, not grim laughter, not cynical laughter, not mocking laughter, laughter, pure and simple, and he does not know if he can stand it.
Pushing himself up, knocking over the chair in his haste to get out, to escape the echo of the laughter (echoes of laughing voices taunting him, mocking him, showing him all he has lost and will never have) but he can't seem to find the door—
"Draco?" her voice, clear and ever so slightly mocking, and with a rasp of breath that is half-sob, half-gasp, he turns to face her, because his damnable Malfoy pride will not allow him to back down a challenge.
"What?" and hopes against hope that his voice does not sound as pathetic to her as it does to him. Running away from laughter? Mocking voices sound in his ears, the Censor, the Collect, the Death Eaters, the Jury, the Judges, all the gatherings of those who criticize, who taunt, those who tear him down on the inside but protect him from the outside world, those who have grown on, leeching from his will, sucking his life from him, all hinging on the voice of the one man who is—was—is—was real, who is dead now but who lives on his mind, a terrible dark legacy, and Draco reels and staggers as his mind pushes out to him the one he has always feared—Lucius Malfoy.
"What's wrong with you?"
"Fuck you," he spits at her even as the mocking chorus of all those who have punished him over the years swells in a horrible crescendo—Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!
She is unfazed. This is War. She has heard worse. "What's wrong with you, Draco?" she speaks quietly, soothingly, and Draco recognizes the tone; it is the tone they use with frightened animals, with Death Eater captives, with Muggles who have been victimized so horribly for something far beyond their control, the tone you use when you see something broken and wish to fix it, the tone you use for those who are weak.
Weak! Weak! Weak! Shout the Collect, the Censor, the Death Eaters, the Jury, the Judges, and his father, weak! Weak! Weak! The one epithet that has not changed with time—the constant, the faithful, and he shivers involuntarily as his vision blurs even further (pale grey hair in that intriguing layer cut, dark grey eyes looking worried at him, pale, almost white grey skin on hands reaching out to touch him as he shakes and shivers like the weakling he is)
And the whole world is spinning like a top—
Shades of grey blurring around him, dark grey, light grey, almost-white, almost-black, steel, iron, silver, metallic, matte, rusted metal, grey, grey, grey, fading into one another—
But no.
In the midst of it all, the chaos and pandemonium and the whirlwind of grey that is his world with the voices of his tormentors ringing in his ears—
Color.
Wonderful, beautiful, marvelous, fantastic color.
Brown eyes like a deer's. Pale, healthy skin glowing. A few freckles dusting her cheeks like cinnamon sprinkles on toast, and yes, now he can remember what cinnamon looks like. Purple hair, of all the ridiculous things, spread across a jean jacket.
Granger.
Hermione.
Hermione Granger, in color. And he can see now, yes, oh God he can see, and oh god oh god it's the most beautiful thing he has ever, ever seen, it's color—color color color color, and how could he forget what it's like to see in color, how could he ever think for a second that it was better to see in grey, he can see in color color color color, and the one thought overshadows all.
Color.
Hermione Granger is in color, and she is beautiful.
He gasps, half-sobbing, but this time it is in pure joy, at the color that suddenly floods his vision. How could he ever, ever have thought that he did not miss color? And suddenly grey seems dull, drab, a color to be sure, but only a color like any other, and he thinks that he might like purple after all, Malfoy color or not.
And maybe grey is depressing after all.
He is laughing, he is laughing laughing laughing, oh sweet Merlin and mother of Circe, he is laughing! Laughing for the first time in what seems like forever, laughing because the sheer joy and life and intensity of it all is crashing down on him, and he is beginning to comprehend what he gave up when he became Tankkutu to see shades of grey.
And the goddess of color is coming closer to him, her red—red!—lips smiling so mysteriously, and god, he does like her hair in purple, and she looks into his eyes with brown—brown!—ones and says, "Yes."
And that is all that is needed, because after all, they are insane.
It's the War.
But for one sparkling, colorful moment, he can forget all that and the War can go to hell, because he is seeing in color, and Hermione Granger is in color, and she is kissing him with those red red lips, and everything is just fine, even if they never did go see Potter.
And Draco no longer sees in shades of grey.