Warning: Slash H/D and thoughts of suicide. Don't like it, don't read it, thank you.
Era/Back-story: The war has just finished. Harry and Draco sort of had a thing before this fic takes place, but both turned each other away at different times.
Disclaimer: Depressingly enough, I don't own Draco nor Harry or anything about the HP world. And for this particular story I don't really own the plot either because it's a challenge fic…strange...
Summary: OneShot. As the sun rises after the war, can they save themselves from the abyss that seems so affirmed? Can they find a way to define their love? DMxHP.
Author's Message:
This is for a challenge by LilyEvans2 on had a lot of fun writing this, so I hope you enjoy.
Baby
I see this world has made you sad
Some people can be bad
The
things they do, the things they say
But baby I'll wipe away those
bitter tears
I'll
chase away those restless fears
That turn your blue skies into
grey
Why
worry, there should be laughter after the pain
There should be
sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So
why worry now
Baby when I get down I turn to you
And you make
sense of what I do
I know it isn't hard to say
But baby just
when this world seems mean and cold
Our love comes shining red
and gold
And all the rest is by the way
Why worry, there
should be laughter after pain
There should be sunshine after rain
These things have always been the same
So why worry now
Lyrics by Dire Straits "Why Worry"
---
We
Watched the Sunrise
The path through the darkness, it's winding and nearly impossible to venture though.
The state of mind, when it has given up so completely and lost all sense of what's good and bad, that's when you've realized you've given up on mankind completely.
The
time just before dawn breaks as the sky turns that gray-blue haze.
Everything is still almost midnight black but shapes can be made out
as time grows on. There is nothing awake quite yet. Nothing stirring
or even seemingly alive.
If the sun were to be out, or even just a light to pass over the earth, you would see the stains of hundreds of mortal's and immortal's insides littering the solid ground. It's a wretched sight, and nothing but miraculous that the few who survived did.
As it was, our tragic hero was one of the few to still be standing. He had won, he had conquered the Dark Lord and yet he felt like the fire in his heart had gone out. His light was extinguished and he didn't think it could ever be relit. Half of everything he had known died this day. What else could a new day bring?
He climbed a granite rock of a hill, making his way slowly to the top. This was where the best view of the sunrise could be captured. He wanted to be away, to be free of everything, and perhaps falling to an inevitable doom was not far out of the question.
He reached the peak of the rock, and he stood looking out, taking in everything. Mangled, limping, poisoned, unconscious bodies lay out in the field bellow. None of them he could recognize, but each one meant the same loss to him.
What was he to say to their families? The thousands of students that had lost their lives here. The hundreds of parents who would not be returning home to their wives, to their children. It was almost too much to believe, and yet it was all too clear.
Sunrise was beginning to be smelt in the air, and that taste of a new day was clear, but Harry knew it was still ten minutes if not more away. This had always been his favorite part of the day, the time when day didn't really exist and night had already passed.
It was beautiful and haunting at the same time. But today had ruined these moments. From now on when he would wake at just the right moment, he was open his eyes to the fading sky and he would just remember the blood. He would remember the gashes across his friend's face. Harry felt his stomach tighten, and he turned up towards the sky again.
With every moment that passed, another story came to form in Harry's mind. These stories started with blurry dreams and moved on to full-length pictures.
The first of which were of Vernon, with his beady eyes and fat torso; Petunia, with her long neck and piecing eyes; and Dudley with his pudgy fists and baby whale size. The memories came flooding in, everything from his childhood and every summer he had ever encountered. All horrible, all making him quiver at the thought.
Hagrid came into his mind. The giant's smile and black eyes. His obsession with dragons and amusement at every dangerous creature that ever lived. He remembered the feeling when Hagrid first told him he was a Wizard. What wonderful and life changing times those had been.
Like snap shots through his mind he finally landed on Ron. His best friend who he hadn't seen in over a year. He wondered if Ron had made it out of the battle okay. If he and Hermione had ever hooked up. He remembered Hermione's bushy hair, and the way she always knew what was going on even when everyone else didn't. They were the perfect team, the three of them.
A movement of memories finally taking him to Ginny. Her lovely hair, her golden eyes, her perfect smile that promised so many things. Ginny and him hadn't made it through their relationship. And he knew that somewhere, if she had survived, Ginny was at peace with her new husband and baby girl.
Backwards in time, before he had met any of the Weasley's and keep going back. Back before he took the train to Hogwarts and stop to see the picture of the angel in black, Draco Malfoy. The first boy who taught Harry the difference between good and evil. The boy who was also the one to take him over that invisible line in some sense.
There was a rustle of bare skin brushing passed grass and Harry didn't bother to look up. His face was blank, his voice was emotionless, but he spoke nonetheless.
"Tell me," he said. "Is it worth it?"
The mortal creature didn't answer, taking a deep breath of warm morning air.
"Is it worth it to keep going on? To live without anything, to know no brightness, no color, no sound?" Harry continued along.
Again there was no answer except in footsteps as they moved next to him. Harry looked over, not surprised to find the angel in black next to him. He gave Draco an inerrant glance, then stepped forward, his body dangerously close to the edge and rocks tumbling loose to the cemetery below.
Harry sat on the edge, his legs dangling over and Draco joined him, being much more careful about his positioning.
"You told me to lose myself in you, and instead I have found myself lost in everything else completely," Harry spoke, the sound of his own voice startling him more and more. "Why must the world be so cruel to the innocent and adolescent? How am I to speak of these things ever again?"
The silence was knowing but still unnerving. He wanted to hear the voice that had spurred so many feelings before, he wanted the emotions back. But even with this serene vulnerable figure next to him, he could feel nothing.
"You tell me, Harry," Draco spoke his name and he shivered as if the wind was chilly. "why you can't learn to live in the present and forget the past. The new day is approaching and everything else is left behind."
The quiet calm that happened after was no more than a minute, but it felt like a life time and all the two did was sit silent listening to nothing at all.
The point they had reached in their lives was this: An unrewarding void, such that: They've heard so many screams that they become mute in their ears. They've tasted so much blood so often that it becomes insipid and invisible. They've carried on for so long that they don't even notice when they have stopped.
His green eyes were barely visible in the light that was starting to grace the sky. And Draco's eyes blended perfectly in tune with the many shades of gray.
"You want to know the definition of irony just look at us," Draco said in a somewhat random manner. Only Harry understood it completely. "Two enemies thrown against each other, and yet here we are. Two enemies who became lovers, and yet we still breath. You would have only believed one of us would come out of this alive after all, it just seems wrong for the world to give us a third chance."
"Fourth," he corrected. "The handshake I turned away is one. The declaration of peace which you wrote up and I told you to get bent was two. And the third was when I came to you and you shut me back out into the snow."
Draco laughed under his breath. "Payback is a bitch."
"I know I deserved it," Harry agreed bitterly. "But you have no idea what that did to me."
"I imagined it at the time, and I lived it day after day. Guilt."
"The definition of guilt is portrayed right here," Harry said in a reply. "You and me, for the things we could have done to turn this out differently."
"And what things are those exactly?"
"You and me for one," he said lightly. "And so many other things. I wasn't strong enough in my past, I could have done more."
"The definition of humility is...well, I'm staring him right in the face," Draco mused, watching Harry's framed eyes.
"I'm certainly not humble, Draco," he said, looking off into the distance again. The light was slowly, very slowly inching it's way up passed the mountains. There was beginning to be a sign of color along the outlines of the earth.
"When the sun rises, you're still going to be here and so am I, the question is what's going to have changed?" Draco asked him, his eyes stern.
"If you want to know the definition of strength all you have to do is look at the ones still standing," he said, choosing to shy away from his question.
"Or the definition of a tragedy, all you have to do is look down," Draco replied.
"And look up to see the definition of hope," he said, and then paused for a moment. "I think."
There was another short silence as they sat watching the colors of daylight come into existence. First the eerie neon red, followed by orange and just the faintest of yellows.
"Do you think we're ever going to be happy again?" he asked, looking at the sky in awe.
"If you want us to be," came the reply. "In a moment you can have everything back, Harry. That is, if you really want it. If you want to feel, if you want to witness every moment, behold every color, even embrace every sound, then all you need to do is give me the word."
"Want to know the best definition of all?" Harry asked.
"What?"
"The definition of you and me," he said. "Is just simply this, magic, beauty, sound, power, life, and death all mixed into one. It's intoxicating and overwhelming, but you crave it night and day, and if you can't have it, then you start to lose sight of everything, you become docile, falling into a stringent state."
"That's kind of what I was going to say, only my way is better," Draco answered.
The sun was just on the edge of bursting into the sky. The air was now a soft cornflower blue, the trees dark green, and just the slightest hint of movement on the earth as a new day was about to begin.
"What's your way?" he asked, turning to him.
"This," he said.
Harry felt the boys hands wrap around his face, taking him to his lips. He invited the kiss, the warmth. As the two embraced in their passion that could only be considered love, the sun rose gently into the sky. Waves of pink and orange flooded off as everything was lit up in perfect colors.
He could taste Draco's warm lips against his. His eyes opened for a moment, and each color was a euphoria of paradise. He closed his eyes, as the new day rang in.
With a thousand new definitions and with a million new reasons to carry on the sun of dawn awakes the night. Life becomes alive once more. And the flame that was once thought frozen over is somehow lit again at just the right time.
Harry smiled into their kiss, and pulled himself and Draco away from the edge and onto the safety of granite.
Any more darkness and they both would have jumped. Any more reminders of everything they had just faced and it would have been their blood mixed with the countless others as it was presumed to be.
With the breaking of dawn, a new hope arose. The two enemies made promises in each kiss, kisses of life, love, and a bright new future. They had survived the darkness and now they could withstand the whole world before them.
It was only a matter of time before they would discover the definition of life. And that definition was simply the moment created by light, which had saved these two souls from their complete lack of existence, their empty abyss.
---
A/N:
I would love to hear what you thought of it, good, bad, okay, brilliant, horrible? Doesn't really matter. Please R&R.
