Title: Wallow in the Mire

Author: Philtrum

Rating: T (PG-13)

Warnings: Slash, strong language, and adult situations to come.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything. Honestly, not a darn thing.

It was the only name Harry had ever heard or known beside his own. Sometimes in the night he would find himself whispering it, a familiar word that was so very foreign. He dreamt about the man who was not his guardian. They would sit in the gardens of his guardian's manor and dangle their fingers over the snapping mouths of the plants, and the man would hold Harry's hand like he always did.

The man often spoke of others, but Harry refused to believe him. He said that he had a son, a boy that was his child. This had confused Harry, but he left the man to his delusions. Parents, the man had said one afternoon as they sat on the floor in the lounge, are like guardians but they gave birth to their children. Children, he learned are young people like him that came out of old people like the man, except for not like the man at all. Women are man's counterpart, he also learned. Harry learned much from the man.

He learned to read. The man would bring books with him and explain the syllables and the letters and this offered a whole new world to Harry. He learned what singing was; the lullabies used to teach him still hummed through his mind every now and then when he thought his guardian was unable to see him swaying to the soft notes.

But most of all, Harry learned of magic. Wonderful things that came out of a very small stick held in the man's hand. Things that could heal and could spark and could dance in the air in colors. The man and his stick—for he was never without his stick—could do a great many things that Harry couldn't, but the man promised that one day he would know how. He would be taught by the others; the people who lived outside his guardian's manor. Harry simply could not believe this, but he trusted the man and his word more than anything.

He was seven when the man stopped coming. There was no reason to his visits, he would just appear one day, falling through the fire to him, and the man would scare off his guardian for a few short hours. The man would leave when the outside got dark and Harry had grown accustom to that. He knew better than to expect the man when it was dark. He had waited and waited and it seemed dark for so many days.

Weeks had passed before Harry garnered the courage to ask his guardian about the man. His question was ignored the first time, and the second time, and every consecutive time after that. On the day his guardian told him he was eight, Harry had resigned to never seeing the man again, though he dared to hope, another thing he had learned from the man.

It was dark beyond the windows of his bedroom, and with the darkness came a longing so very deep in his heart. Today his guardian had told him he was 10 years old. Harry had grown cold over the past years. His mind began to wander from life within the manor to life beyond it. He wondered if he left, if he could find the man, if maybe the man would love him again like he had so long ago. He wondered if the man would hold his hand one more time.

As the chill night air wrapped around him, he sunk lower into the sheets of his bed and wished himself to a land where the man would find him and teach him. Curling his arms about his pillow, he turned his nose into the warmth beneath his head and hissed the name that his guardian so often denied him the right of saying aloud.

"Lucius, please."