Title: Talk of Love
Disclaimer: I own nothing. JK Rowling pwns all.
Warnings: Slash, perhaps smutty in later chapters. Suggested character death.
A/N: I wrote this almost on a whim, but as I went on, I put a hell of a lot of effort into it… staying up until 3am the day before exams at school just because I needed to end a section in a particular way. But like always, I probably won't write more than this. But I might.
This is either going to be really good, or absolutely terrible. Make your choice and let me know! Thanks!
It's been 10 years since the end of the war. But it hasn't been long enough.
He lived a broken life; facetious attitude and lifestyle enhanced tenfold by his own endeavors during the war added to what his father left behind. He lived alone as an adult in the mansion he knew as a child he would inherit. Though as a child, he thought he would enjoy the privilege a lot more. Everything in the house reminded him a past he fought so hard to forget and he remembered it always, even in his dreams, waking up in the night to his own blood-curdling screams, echoing through the wide empty corridors that were his and his alone.
There was no one left but him. No one whole, that is. Or so they thought. All were injured, driven mad with torture, or dead. But what they didn't understand was that he wasn't whole. Not at all. He was broken, damaged, dented, smashed, and hurt in every way and the worst way: a way no one could ever see, much less understand. It was an unrelenting ache in the center of his chest that he didn't even want to examine or know was there. If there was no pain, he wouldn't even know he was hurt. But it was a sore that was stealing itself over his entire being, contaminating everything he touched and rotting every bright and happy thought he could call his. It wouldn't let him forget.
Left alone in the world, with nothing at his side but his putrid suffering, there was nothing left for him to do than think about it. About it… And him… Dead and dying. A bubble of blood forming and bursting on those lips he'd kissed so many times. The light leaving those eyes he'd stared into every night for a year and dreamed about so much longer than that.
It's been 10 years since the end of the war. But it hasn't been long enough for him to heal or forget such an image. Nightmares played in his head at night like muggle home movies still, slide after slide depicting battle after batter… image after image… death after death. He would watch helplessly as he fought and killed, or sometimes just watching without being seen, an obscured onlooker. And then he would wake, drenched in sweat as though he'd stepped out of an entire pool of water, screaming for people that were no longer there in a voice that was no longer his.
He couldn't stand his loneliness anymore. He couldn't stand the memories. He couldn't stand to live and yet he feared death above all else.
He remembered when he received the letter. Contact from the outside world, a sign that life went on outside these thick, old stone walls. It was the first letter he'd received in a long time and it was an odd and beautiful thing.
Thin fingers tore open the seal and eyes like winter scanned the parchment.
You are invited to the funeral
In memorial of
HARRY JAMES POTTER
Who died in combat after defeating Voldermort.
Aged 27
At Hogwarts, School of Witchcraft and Wizardry
Following was a short verse from a poem Draco had never heard of, talking of death and loss and weakness and such nonsense that didn't interest him.
It was eerie seeing his name like that... so formal… written in a painstakingly trim and curved hand that was unmistakable as Hermione's. Simply the fact that He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named was named… he didn't doubt it was her. He still cringed as he heard his mind's voice say the name. Harry used to say it all the time, but going so long without hearing it… put him right back where he used to be.
Draco noticed, with a frown and wrinkle of blonde brow, that a smaller piece of parchment fell from the envelope. It had gone unnoticed as he read but he now sighted it out of the corner of his eye. Picking it up, he recognized Hermione's hand still.
Please come.
I know it's hard, but there won't be a body. Everyone will be there. We want to see you.
Love, Hermione.
Love. The word was something he used to long for in the middle of the night. A word he heard used loosely and never really felt until Harry. And then it was taken away from him so forcefully, he was thrown back on his rear and left not only without it, but with a clearly defined gap, representing the short time he held it dear.
Love. He missed it. But he didn't want it now.
He'd go. Harry would want him to. But there would be no love involved.
Hermione lied, Draco realized as he entered the gates. Not everyone would be here. Too many had died. It was impossible for everyone to be here. He thought hard as he walked towards the lake, where he noticed people were congregated. Perhaps she meant in spirit. Yes, that's what she meant. Everyone would be here in spirit.
The first person he recognized was Neville Longbottom. He'd lost a significant amount of weight, but he sat with a kind-faced, yet impatient looking Healer at the edge of the crowd. He stared straight ahead with a blind mans' gaze, piercing, dumb but still somehow knowledgeable. His face was thin and sallow, possessing none of the round pinkness it used to. His foot was tapping incessantly to a beat that constantly changed. Neville observed Draco hard as he passed him, his foot stopping tapping at once as he watched him.
The next twenty minutes went by in a sort of blur. Hermione greeted him warmly, clasping his hands in hers and speaking to him softly. Like a child. Asking how things have been. How he's been keeping up. He granted her one word answers, only smiling politely as his eyes beheld all who had fought alongside him and survived.
There was George, now a single twin after Fred died fighting. Bill, still rather wolfish holding hands with his beautiful vela of a wife. Charlie with a long gash across his left cheek, but a large smile nonetheless. Percy who had finally chosen to fight and was now missing a leg. And Tonks. Her hair was long and black for the occasion, but he knew she was grieving for someone else as well as Harry.
Draco tried not to think about the ones who were here in spirit. Tonk's husband of only one year – Lupin – was tortured until he committed suicide. Ron had died early in the battles, never having told Hermione his true feelings for her until it was too late. His father went as well, as well as the other Weasley twin. Professor's McGonagall and Moody – not in the prime of their lives anymore – weren't able to take the amount of curses they had to.
And then there was Ginny. She was injured, he was told, but the scars were on her legs and chest, hidden by black blouse and skirt. Her red hair was very short now, cut into a bob around her ears.
She took a seat next to him in the back of the group. Many others had arrived to pay their last respects. People Draco knew from school and people he'd never seen before. Harry had been, and still is, famous, therefore wasn't surprised to see such an assembly.
Sitting next to Ginny Weasley was odd. They'd never had much contact. To tell the truth, Draco had always envied her for getting Harry before he had. Sometimes, he worried that Harry still had feelings for her. It killed him with jealousy, but he couldn't help but see why.
They didn't speak, just listened as people stood, spoke, cried and laughed. Neither made a sound nor moved a muscle, a connection extending between them and neither one sure really why.
Finally Ginny spoke. "He was amazing."
It took a few moments, but Draco managed to find his voice. "Quite."
Suddenly, an understanding. An agreement.
"Before he died, he told me he would have let himself love me if he weren't so afraid to loose me." She sounded as though she'd been dying to tell someone this. Not for immodest purposes, but just as a fact. A trait of he man she'd loved.
Draco frowned. There was that talk of love again. But her words had roused something deep in him. A familiarity. A memory… and finally a good one. "He told me the same thing."
She didn't seem surprised. "So he almost loved us, but was afraid to."
"He was."
"But we both fully loved him," she said softly, looking at her hands in her lap.
A hesitation. "We did."
She looked up, looking up at the sky above, which shone with a bright blue that was completely unnecessary for such an occasion. "Love is a funny thing… confusing as hell, though." They looked at each other.
It was a gesture he was unaware of making, and almost forgot he knew how to make. "It is," he said with a smile.
I shall omit bloody details of the war. It prolonged eleven years, beginning at Dumbledore's death and ending with Voldermort and Harry's. Draco had been sixteen at the start and twenty-seven at the end. It was a long eleven years, during which he morphed like a caterpillar into a butterfly, but the outcome wasn't as beautiful as he would have perceived with such a metaphor.
After failing to commit the murder he had promised, his parents had been killed. It was one of the memories that stalked him during the moonlit hours, the loss turning him into something that wasn't him – something he found impossible to explain: a vampire out in the daylight, a flower without its petals, a broken light bulb.
He was, however, still alive. Voldermort wanted him to try again. He wanted to offer him another chance, but Draco was too weak. Or perhaps, too brave. He could never sort it out. All he knew was that one day, he found himself at the headmasters' door at Hogwarts.
It was the last thing everyone expected – for Draco Malfoy to become a member of the Order. But at seventeen, orphaned, scarred and scared… he didn't know what else he could do. Perhaps this unnamed feeling that was itching at him since his parents' death and that night on the tower drove him to switch over.
But in any event, he fought against his cousins. Killed former friends. Was injured by aunts and uncles. Every battle was like staring into and then smashing a mirror: seeing what he used to be and partly still was and then destroying it, to try to demolish it forever. But the pieces kept reassembling, the shards returned to their place on the wall before him and he had to start all over.
And then he had help. All of a sudden, Harry was there. A friend. And then more. Most of the Order disliked him still, though tolerated him for the sake of unity. Harry could see the frail and frightened being inside of him, the changed, or changing, Draco for he had begun a change too. They were placid and quiet, barely speaking usually. But fierce and angry during battle, busy with nothing but trying to break the enemy: Harry's foes and Draco's mirror.
Harry began visiting him in his tent at night to make sure he was okay. For ten years, their friendship grew. They would barely speak during the day; brusque formality was their way of exchanging love. Meanwhile during night… it was like they were different people altogether. They shed their manly skins and sunk into each others arms as warm and tender things, replacing every horrific and bloody memory with loving touches and soft words.
It was an odd fixation Draco never knew before. Being loved.
And then Harry was gone. And he took a piece of Draco with him. The victory of the war was bitter-sweet. They saved the wizarding world, but they couldn't save the lives that were lost. The love that was lost.
He was startled, years after that day, to hear the doorbell ring for the first time in ages. He had been just thinking about making dinner when the bone-chilling series of notes rang throughout the house. He rushed to the front hall like a house-elf. He wasn't sure if he was eager for the company or was eager to send away whatever poor sod decided to call upon him so unexpectedly.
Chocolate eyes behold his own granite-like ones as he swung the door back and a pleasant flowery smell met his nose, battling past the smell of decay held in the house. And now his mind was quickly emptied of previous questions and filled with new ones, ones that he now only asked himself but her gaze asked him as well: was he pleased to see Ginny? Or was it his intention to send her away like anyone else and spend the rest of his time in solitude? And why in the world had she arrived here in the first place? He had no idea she even knew where the Malfoy Mansion was.
"I was just about to make dinner," he told her. There. He would leave it to her to decide by neither offering an invitation nor rejection.
"I – I won't intrude then." And she began to turn away...
"He didn't tell everyone about you, you know."
Draco looked up. She was staring into her wine glass, the food he'd conjured up remained untouched even though they'd been sitting there ten minutes already.
"Sorry?"
She traced the rim of the glass gently with her forefinger. He watched her, fork poised over his potatoes.
"He only told Hermione and Ron and Neville and me about… you two."
His stomach jolted and he placed down his fork. "What exactly did he say?" he inquired. He figured they knew, the way Hermione fussed over him sometimes and the way Ron used to look at him, as though he were dating his daughter and he was unsure of his intentions.
She didn't answer straightaway, and her childish hesitance and refusal to meet his eyes annoyed him somewhat. And what she finally said mystified him slightly.
"He said you meant a lot to him and that you were trying to heal each other. That he cared a lot about you."
His brow creased, but he remained still.
"He said you had changed a lot, but you still had a lot of changing to do. And that the war was either going to heal or destroy you." She looked up at him. It was as though a spider dropped down from the archaic chandelier and began weaving a web between them. It began to draw them closer together so that the distance across the vast table suddenly wasn't so vast. "What did it do?"
A pause. Then he looked down at his plate and the web crumbled silently and floated away in the breeze of tension.
"I don't know."
He knew he wasn't healed, not in the least. But he wasn't destroyed either. He was still here, beaten into submission by the sidewalk of life and all its cracks and faulty steps, but he was still alive. Yet perhaps surviving all his terrors and succeeding in smashing his mirror for the final time healed him. And perhaps trying as hard as he did, he destroyed more than had been ruined before…
He would have shared all this with Ginny but it was hard enough to sort out in his head, let alone translate into a language his tongue could understand. He shook his head dumbly, as though trying to shake water out of his ears. "I don't know."