Title: Numb (1/2)
Pairing: DM/HP
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I don't own Harry Potter in any manner whatsoever. Look to the lady in Britain. You know, the one who's now richer than the Queen of England? Yeah, her.
Summary: Christmas holidays are approaching and Draco knows he's running out of time. So decides to do something about it. Even with so many people around, and one who truly does care for him, he knows he can get away with it.
Category: One-Shot/Angst
Notes: Inspired by Linkin Park's Numb. Please forgive any OOCs; I do try my best to keep Draco, Harry, Hermione, etc. in character when I'm writing. The S.P.I.W. column by Ashavah aka JK is very useful; a rather invaluable tool that I am glad I stumbled on. I read it on Lumos Dissendium; if you need writing advice for HP, this place puts everything you could need at your fingertips.
Beta: The very wonderful Majikbeens

WARNING: There is a character death in this fic. I don't want to say whom and give it away.

The room was dark but faint shapes could still be seen. The armoire was an impassive bulk while the chair cut a graceful silhouette against the dark wall. A desk stood against the wall, its blackness marred by the smooth yellow of parchment. The night tables framed the headboard of the bed. And on the bed itself, two figures could be seen. One was lying straight with eyes widen open, while the other curved around and against him. Draco'd been lying there like that for the past few hours after letting the slumbering Harry beside him have his fill of pleasure.

He figured it saddened him a bit. Before, he derived great pleasure from the sheer physicality of their relationship. It seemed to reach its crescendo when they became emotionally involved as well. The sex had never been better, they both had never been happier.

And then, it all started to wane. It was gradual. So gradual that Draco hadn't even realised it. He hadn't realised it until sometime around last May, when they were waiting for their last exam to come up and planning to spend a few days together during the summer holidays. He'd given the replies expected of him and all had seemed well.

If Harry noticed anything wrong, he didn't say a thing. But it was more the case that he didn't notice. That's the way it usually was. Unless one of his friends pointed it out – usually Granger – he was fairly oblivious. There were his moments of perceptive insight, but those were few and far between; reading of extremely subtle clues was never his forte.

In a way, that gave him a failsafe. By the time Granger noticed – Circe knew Weasley wouldn't notice it unless it was on a chessboard or screamed at him until it was blue in the face – it would be too late for them to 'intervene.'

Draco rose from the bed, gently slipping out from Harry's arm thrown over his waist. The floor was cool against his feet, but he didn't mind. He didn't even bother to put on pants as he padded his way to the bathroom. He paused at the door before walking over to the desk and picking up the parchment.

The sudden light of the bathroom was harsh on his eyes after the dark and his pupils contracted to small points in an effort to allow him to still see. He made his way to the bathroom sink, looking in the mirror with the letter still clutched in his fingers.

"I finally get some quiet and you come barging in here." The mirror huffed indignantly.

He looked at the mirror for a long moment, not saying anything to it before he held up the letter to read it. The elegant handwriting seemed to be frosty and cold, so very like him.

'When you come home, you will.'

That was it. There was nothing else. He knew exactly what it was referring to. It was to the Dark Mark, to his initiation into servitude for the Dark Lord. You-Know-Who. He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Tom Riddle. Lord Voldemort.

It still struck him as rather hypocritical to receive something like this from Lucius, even when he knew it was coming. The normally cold and impassive Lucius Malfoy was always going on about the pride and the respect of being a pureblood. If that was so, how could he bring himself to lick the boots of a man who was a mere halfblood, not even worth his time and effort?

To spend so much energy furthering the cause of a deluded psychotic when it wasn't worth it and made you a walking contradiction seemed rather foolish.

Warped. That was about the only word that Draco could use to describe his relationship with Lucius. Pseudo-relationship was a much more appropriate word. Lucius had spent so much time instilling the virtues of a proper pureblood upbringing into him that he lived, breathed, and believed it wholly. There had never been anything else between them. Simply decorum, inflicted beliefs, and the lessons of pain upon disobedience. That was, until he came to Hogwarts. Maybe if he had been sent to Durmstrang he'd still believe those ideals, believe that he was inherently better than virtually everyone else was and not have to be punished as much.

Harry Potter and Hermione Granger; they had been the two to shake what he had believed for eleven years. The halfblood and the Mudblood; one destined to bring down Voldemort, the other one far too smart and bookish for her own good.

Draco could still remember the look on Lucius' face once he found out that Granger was a Mudblood; a Mudblood who had surpassed his heir in everything. Surpassed wasn't quite the right word. Soundly trounced was what it really was. And it had earned him a stay in the place that haunted his childhood.

The dungeons. Perhaps that's why he felt so much at home in the Slytherin dorms, why he felt much more at ease with a cold breeze about rather than a warm one. The cold had become such a part of him from such an early age that he instinctively shrank away from warmth, attempting to pull others with him.

It was rather ironic that Lucius put him in a dungeon for misbehaving in a larger unseen dungeon. That's all his life seemed to be really. Commands from his jailer parents, sneers, derision, leaving one gaol to go to one with the name of Hogwarts... he was never free of someone's demands.

He looked back at himself in the mirror. His skin was still pale, the face pointed with a nose that had become rather aquiline. He knew that nose didn't belong to Lucius, it belonged to his grandfather. His smooth arching eyebrows came from his mother, while steel grey came from his grandfather again. Hands were his mothers, feet were his grandfather's. Funny, how he seemed to look more like his grandfather than he did like Lucius. But he knew the reason for that as well. He'd found it out quite by accident. Lucius didn't know that he knew. Narcissa, who doted on him, didn't know that he knew. He kept the secret to himself, locked away, yet another thing to add to one long list of twisted things.

Nothing was ever right in a pureblood family. The politics of marriage, of keeping the line pure, of rabid bigotry perpetuated through offspring borne of necessity rather than desire... it was no small wonder they were dying out, and there were very few pureblood families left.

Draco had said that to Lucius once when he was ten. A sharp backhand and two weeks in the dungeon had taught him to never say anything contradictory to Lucius, even if Lucius was a contradiction in and of himself. That was the other thing never mentioned. Even in front of Lucius he couldn't be honest; it was rather sad to think of a child, who should have possessed a degree of innocence, presenting a façade to the world.

He looked down at the letter with its sum total of six words. Draco stared at it for what seemed like a very long time before he raised a lethargic hand and turned on the tap. The water gushed out from it; cold, smarting and crisp as it swirled around the bowl of the sink. He let it fill up rising closer and closer to the brim. Then he turned the tap off and plunged the letter into the frigid liquid. The ink seemed to lift right off the parchment, spending an almost eternal moment suspended in nothingness before it dissipated with curling tendrils through the water. He pulled his hand out, watching the ink; it was like watching insidiousness itself vanish away with no consequences.

If only he could do that so easily and free himself from this gaol.

"Draco? What are you doing?"

He looked up and turned around at the sound of a sleepy voice. A tousled head and eyes being rubbed from a body leaning against the doorframe greeted him. Harry's green eyes were slightly confused and a shiver passed over the tanned skin.

"Nothing."

"Then what's that in the sink?"

"It's nothing," Draco walked over to the brunette and placed a hand on his waist, nuzzling his neck lightly. "Let's get back to bed."

Gold, orange, pink, and dark blue were splotched across the sky, small pinpoints appearing in the darkest of the colours. The late November air was just as he liked it, crisp and cold enough to cause a slight burn as it travelled down to his lungs. He took a deep breath, savouring the way it felt, and he received a puzzled look.

"Is something wrong?"

"Nothing's wrong," Draco said quietly, looking over and giving a small smile. "Everything's perfectly fine."

"Then why'd you sigh so heavily?"

He arched an eyebrow. "I was taking a deep breath. There is a difference between them."

Harry grinned with a sparkle in his green eyes. "Remember sixth year here?"

Draco didn't say nor do anything beyond giving an affirmative grunt as a familiar weight settled against him. How could he forget that day, that year, here on the Quidditch pitch? The first match of that year had Gryffindor vs. Slytherin. Everyone had turned up for the game. It had started off cordially enough, but descended into a rather bloody free-for-all. And somewhere in between all that and the quest for glory, he'd seen him differently.

It had seemed like a sharp splintering of reality that almost had him falling from his broom. Draco didn't see the infamous Boy-Who-Lived, Scarhead, or nemesis. No, he saw simply a boy playing Quidditch against another team, against another boy, simply that and nothing more. In that one moment, it was as if there was nothing else and they were simply equals.

The moment wasn't lost to Harry either. Apparently that moment had cost Slytherin the Snitch, and he received a reaming from the team captain. Later in the evening, he'd been...accosted and questioned as to why he threw the game.

All he could do was look at Harry and reply, 'I saw you' before pushing away and continuing on his journey back to his dorm room.

Apparently that had been enough to pique interest. It had started as a tentative friendship and blossomed from there.

He was pretty sure that Lucius had found out about it somehow. It seemed fuzzy to try and remember it. He was sure that words had been exchanged and some time spent in the dungeons. But the niggling feeling that there was something else missing from his memory pervaded him, as if there was something Obliterated or perhaps blocked out by his subconscious. Perhaps it was a bit of both. Lucius certainly let it be clearly known to him that there was no love lost between them, and he certainly had plenty of those fuzzy incoherent memories at the moment. He rubbed his left temple lightly, a frown coming to his face.

"All right, what's wrong, Draco?"

"Nothing, I'm just thinking."

"Would you stop lying," Harry gave a soft but disgusted sigh along with the sound of shifting. "You've been like this for the past week. You know you can tell me."

Draco didn't reply for a long moment. So, it was something of perceptive insight today. He looked up into the green eyes clouded with worry, anxiousness, and a bit of fear. There were things he had wanted to tell Harry once, but he hadn't been ready to hear them. And now that he was, it didn't matter. He'd be finding out eventually.

"Draco?" The worry was much sharper this time.

Reaching up, Draco clasped the pair of slightly frigid hands in his own hands, absorbing the coldness. "Marry me."

"W-What?"

"Marry me."

"Draco, I...don't you think this is a bit hasty?"

"Is it?" he asked.

Startlement appeared in Harry's eyes now. "A little bit. I figured you'd ask this question a few years down the road. Not when we're sitting in the Quidditch stands."

Draco gave a soft smile. "Marry me."

Harry nibbled his lips and anxiousness filled those eyes for a moment before it melted away and a smile came.

"Marry me." Draco repeated.

"Yes,"

Draco found himself in a tight embrace, face peppered with kisses. It was their relationship that had kept them both safe. Lucius didn't dare displease Voldemort by having him break up the relationship. If he joined, there was a good chance that he could deliver the wanted prize easily, right out from under Dumbledore's nose. Voldemort wouldn't want to jeopardise something that could possibly help him win in the end. But once Draco refused, he knew what would come; it would come for both of them, hard, unyielding, and relentless. This was the only way to keep at least one of them safe.

The next words spoken were overjoyed and broken by the many kisses. "Yes, I will."

The ceremony had been short with Hermione Granger, Ronald Weasley, Professor Minerva McGonagall, and Professor Severus Snape as witnesses. None one of the four had looked very happy about being there to witness such a thing. From their expressions, they would have much been happier to wade around in a room full of Bubotuber pus while nude.

Dumbledore, on the other hand, had looked absolutely thrilled and had heartily agreed to conduct the ceremony. It helped that he still retained a judicial post and was able to do it. Once the ceremony had been completed, a marriage certificate had appeared on the table and they all signed. All seven signatures were still gleaming in wet ink when it vanished away into the Ministry's marriage license files for safekeeping.

Needless to say, there had been one very shocked student population the next day.

And now, a month later and in quarters of their own, they were ensconced in their own little world. Only Draco knew it was going to come to an end soon. He looked up from his desk to see quills and parchment all over the floor and a small furrow remained lodged in Harry's otherwise smooth brow as he pored over something and corrected it.

"Yes, I'm very certain that's it," Harry murmured as he looked over the parchment in front of him. The muted words were followed by some quick writing and then an immensely satisfied expression. He lapsed into silence for a moment and then he looked at Draco. "Yes, did you want something?"

Draco gave a small smile seeing those happy eyes and crooked his finger. The dark haired boy rose and shot over like a hex. "I've got something for you."

"Really?"

"Really." He reached in the drawer and drew out a ring; he'd had to Owl his mother for it, but he'd gotten it back promptly. "Now you have a proper ring."

Harry's eyes grew wide as it slid on, the platinum gleaming in the soft light along with the few embedded diamonds and emeralds. It seemed all too fitting.

"Draco – "

"You would have gotten it anyway," he said, the double meaning known only to him.

"Are you sure?" The hesitancy was accompanied with an inspection of the ring now on the finger. "It's- It's a family heirloom."

"Precisely," Draco gave a mischievous smirk, "Mr. Potter-Malfoy."

"You sure have been giving away a lot of stuff recently," Harry mused with an admiring smile.

"Between the two of us, we have more than enough for a long while, don't you agree?" Draco asked.

"Good point," a laugh and then a kiss. "Haven't you had enough work, Mr. Potter-Malfoy?"

The words were followed by talented lips and tongue moving down his throat. "I would have to agree with you on that," he murmured abandoning his work on the desk.

They stumbled into the bedroom, and he forgot about the letters that he had to write. It was in that dark bedroom full of whispered sweet nothings, cries of pleasure, and honest incoherence that Draco felt alive. And it was after when they lay curled around one another that he placed his hand on the other's belly. It felt warmer, as if it were pulsating with energy... as if it were the start of a quickening. He closed his eyes and pressed a kiss against the untroubled brow next to his, feeling his eyes prickle with tears. How sad that the ability to feel would come back now...

Hogwarts was emptying out. It was now the second week of December and the ground was covered in a soft blanket of the fluffy white stuff. The list of those who would be staying had been passed around. Draco had signed it but only to simplify things. One week...for one glorious week he had seen what it meant all over again. He had rediscovered what he thought he had lost with Harry; it hadn't been lost at all. It was as if those seven days had been coloured by the brightest and most vivid of emotions. Reds, greens, blues, yellows, oranges, it didn't matter; all he knew was that they had blended to create something, something magnificent yet sadly short-lived. And even in the dark of night, with his sleeplessness, he would press a hand to that still smooth belly across from his and know that it wasn't in vain.

He supposed he could blame Lucius for this. In a way he could blame himself. In another way he could thank his mother, grandfather, and archaic wizarding laws. In another way he could thank just about everything and everyone. But there was one person he couldn't thank enough. Even if it meant he now had to hurt that person in the worst way possible in order to save them the only way he knew how, the only way he could.

He knew what Granger would do – be there for comfort, a shoulder to lean on and someone to talk to. Weasley would more than rage and storm that the promise to not hurt had been broken and required swift, fast, and brutal retribution. But they would be there for him and help him through.

Maybe it was unfair, doing this and not leaving a clear enough target. Maybe he should simply refuse the Dark Mark and allow Lucius to kill him. That would help ease the pain somewhat. And if Weasley and Granger killed him, it certainly wouldn't be the varnish off his wand. But there was a chance that such an act would simply unravel his plans. And that he wasn't about to risk. Not when so much stood on the line.

Perhaps his life had been wasted, ill used on petty grievances in the larger scheme of things. But that's what Lucius had crafted him to be. To be in his own image, to be a perfect miniature Lucius Malfoy, even when he was not, down to the core. And he was still a bastard through and through, figuratively speaking of course. However, in these last few minutes, he wasn't anything Lucius had tried to craft him into. All that remained of what Lucius had drilled into him was this: family duty. It was one's honour-bound duty to protect the family. What he was about to do Lucius would dismiss as a coward's way out. Perhaps it was, but he knew that cold man would never do anything remotely like this.

He'd thought that to be a merely idiotic sentiment but standing up here, knowing what he was about to do; what he had to do...it didn't seem that way now. Maybe there was a bit of a Gryffindor in him after all.

He reached in his pocket and drew out the letters. One addressed to Granger, one to Weasley ( the shortest ones,) another one to Professor Snape who was something of a surly surrogate father figure to him, and the last one to Harry, to the one he had to hurt. The letter had already been sent to his lawyer, and everything was in place. The letter to his mother would be sent with his owl come nightfall; he knew, however, she would have heard the news before then. He drew his wand, using a temporary sticking spell to place the letters on the spot he had cleared of snow. He looked at his wand for a moment; the length of ash had served him well in the seven years he had used it. He placed it beside the last letter and stepped back, looking at them. That was the last thing he had to do.

He stepped up onto the ledge, looking down. At the moment, he was at the top of the Astronomy Tower watching the last of the carriages file down to the train station at Hogsmeade. He could see the sun glinting off the roofs, the vehicles, and gleam dully on the bodies of the Thestrals. Thestrals...he'd always hoped that he would never see one in his life. He wasn't too sure why he could see them now. It all had to do with one of the fuzzy blanks in his memory. Not that it mattered much anyhow.

The sky was a dome of pearly-grey, and when he looked down, the vast uninterrupted distance between his perch and the ground threatened to swallow him whole. That was just what he wanted. He turned his gaze back to the door, an amused and wistful smile coming to his face. This was the moment where the door burst open and he was forcibly dragged down, sobbed over, and yelled at.

That, thankfully, wouldn't be coming.

He looked back out, taking in the scenery one last time before he looked down.

"I'm sorry, Mother," he murmured as he spread his arms and fell. "I'm sorry, Harry."

- fin -

Numb – Linkin Park/Meteora (lyrics are simply retyped out from the Meteora booklet, with small corrections)

I'm tired of being what you want me to be
Feeling so faithless
Lost under the surface
Don't know what you're expecting of me
Put under the pressure
Of walking in your shoes

- Caught in the undertow /just caught in the undertow -
Every step I take is another mistake to you
- Caught in the undertow/just caught in the undertow -

chorus
I've
Become so numb
I can't feel you there
Become so tired
So much more aware
I'm becoming this
All I want to do
Is be more like me
And be less like you

Can't you see that you're smothering me
Holding too tightly
Afraid to lose control
Cause everything that you thought I would be
Has fallen apart right in front of you

- Caught in the undertow /just caught in the undertow -
Every step that I take is
Another mistake to you
- Caught in the undertow /just caught in the undertow -
And every second I waste
Is more than I can take

chorus
I've
Become so numb
I can't feel you there
Become so tired
So much more aware
I'm becoming this
All I want to do
Is be more like me
And be less like you

And I know
I may end up failing too
But I know
You were just like me
With someone disappointed in you

chorus
I've
Become so numb
I can't feel you there
Become so tired
So much more aware
I'm becoming this
All I want to do
Is be more like me
And be less like you

I've become so numb
I can't feel you there
- Tired of being what you want me to be -

I've become so numb
I can't feel you there
- Tired of being what you want me to be -