This fanfic picks up with Harry four years after the defeat of Voldemort. Harry is 21 and lives with Ron, Hermione and Ginny in a small apartment in London. He and Ron both work for the ministry, Hermione is perusing S.P.E.W. and Ginny is a member of the holly head harpies (keeping in line with what JKR has told us about their post Hogwarts experience). Here however we veer off the course that JKR has set and explore a scenario that doesn't include the kids, etc. Some of the things I write may seem a little bit out of character but I tried to remain to true what I felt was the deepest sense of the characters while also allowing room for them to mature. Enjoy!
I acknowledge that none of these wonderful characters belong to me but are the property and creation of the always brilliant J.K. Rowlling. I thank her for building a world that is truly complex and beautiful for all of us to enjoy.
Cave: Chapter 1
He awoke. Or did he? Try as he might to blink away the darkness, it relentlessly pursued his pupils. This isn't my bed, he thought silently as he fingered the moist rocky ground beneath him. Thoughts and fear began to bubble to the surface of his newly conscious mind. Where was he? Who was he? The latter of the two questions proved to be the easiest to answer at the moment. My name is Harry Potter, I am 21 years old, I Live with Ronald Weasley, Hermione Granger and my fiancéeGinny Weasley, to in a small two bedroom apartment in London. I work for the Ministry of Magic as an Auror...These and other self identifying facts tumbled through him as he tried to remember his own face and regain his bearings. I defeated Voldemort four years ago, I was the Boy Who Lived, now I am the Man Who Killed. Self awareness was hitting him like a brick wall.
Now the first matter remained to be dealt with. As his sight was clearly failing him, he decided to rely on his other senses. He swallowed back the fear that was bubbling up from his stomach; fear would not help him now. The wall he was leaning against seemed to be curved, hard and not at all smooth to the touch. Was he on a mountain? There were no stars above him and the air was stale and stagnant, not windy, so this was unlikely. He felt slowly upwards with trembling hands, raising them to trace the rocky outlines. They curved over him to form a moist ceiling. This was a cave. He could hear something that sounded like static in the distance, a radio maybe. Why would a radio be in a cave? No. Water. His mind jumped to a distant memory, a cave with a lake full of dead bodies, pallid skinned and vacant eyed. Without thinking, he grabbed for his wand but nothing was there. He searched in a panicked frenzy for it, breath quickening with every failed attempt to locate it. In a cave, wandless, possibly dreaming, alone, was the new update to his sense of self. This would not be the first time he had had one of these dreams though he felt so much more aware of himself now than in the others. Well, no use sticking around here, he thought and decided to quietly step forward.
He planted his barefoot onto a seemingly stable rock. He pushed in slightly to test it. It was wet and slick but otherwise static. After a few moments of deliberation, he shifted his weight onto it and immediately regretted the decision. He slid painfully to the rocky floor, slicing his left ankle and skinning the palms of his hands. The pain was sharp at first then dull and throbbing.
"Ah! Ow! Umph!" he was on the floor in an instant and as he felt for his ankle, he found it was covered in a warm sticky substance that he was only too familiar with. In a cave, wandless, definitely not dreaming, and alone. However just as he thought those words, a familiar voice echoed down the length of the cave.
"Who's there?" called the hoarse voice. It was low and gravely. Definitely that of a young man. The man cleared his throat and called out again, his voice echoing towards Harry. "I said, who's there?" this time he demanded with a little bit more force.
"That all depends on who's asking!" Harry called back tentatively not wanting to reveal himself quite yet. The voice was familiar but unrecognizable.
"Potter? Harry Potter, is that you?" called back the voice. It was trembling and sounded angry.
"Who wants to know?" Harry challenged. His heart was racing. He was injured, wandless and had no idea who was advancing towards him. He felt about for a sharp rock to wield.
"Really now, after all of these years you don't recognize my voice?" the response came back trembling but almost mocking. In an instant, a face came to his mind but no name. Blond hair, grey eyes that sat atop high set cheek bones and a pointed sharp jaw line. Tall and lithe. The name was escaping him.
"Your name- I can't remember... but-"
"I was disowned. You won't be able to associate my last name with me. It's magically impossible. Think of my father and you will remember it." The voice shouted back sounding an odd combination of scared and bored.
"Lucius Malfoy... Draco? What the hell are you doing here? Where have you taken me?" Harry shouted. He got up and tried to feel his way towards the newly identified source of the voice.
"Where have I- what? No! I haven't done anything, Potter!" Draco spat back in disgust. "I'm just as lost as you are right now and I don't appreciate these accusations!"
"Draco, I don't give a damn whether or not you appreciate it!" Harry shouted.
"I don't particularly like your tone either." Draco concluded icily.
Harry was fuming. Here he was stuck goodness knows where with his boyhood nemesis, without a wand or any hope of having a useful fellow captive and Draco was complaining about the tone he was using to address him. Hatred was fusing with fear. Draco must be lying.
"I don't believe you for a goddam second, M-Draco!" he tried in vain to say his last name but found it to be impossible. "You're a disgusting piece of filth who couldn't tell the truth to save your own life!"
"Oh, Potter what the fuck do you know about me? Don't even try to pretend-"
"No actually I'm certain you could do it to save your own life, but anyone else's?" he felt as though he had the upper hand now.
"The truth does not save lives, you twit, it takes them," Draco finished quietly. Harry was infuriated by how calm he remained as though nothing that he said really affected him. Draco took advantage of this pause and continued, "You may not remember this but you almost lost your life in my house and if I hadn't lied and said that I didn't recognize you, you would be dead right now and you know it. I couldn't save you but I gave you the extra few seconds you needed."
"Yes, you did but you also tried to capture me afterwards! And how exactly did you know it was me?" Harry's voice was shaking with rage and doubt.
"Well, your eyes, no one has eyes like those."
"Draco, are you hitting on me?" Harry's mind was reeling at these new revelations. Why had Draco been disowned? And further more why was he here with Harry to begin with?
"Potter, you must be even more daft than the papers say you are these days."
"And you must be even dumber than I thought you were if you still read and believe the papers." To Harry's surprise the sound that met his comment was laughter. It was not a raucous cry by any means, just the slightest chuckle. He could feel his temper rising steadily. His fingers prickled with hot blood and his head felt light. "What are you laughing at," he tone was deadly and low, barely a whisper.
"It was a funny, socially critical comment, so I laughed. Listen, Potter I'm dreadfully tired of this game. The situation we are in could potentially be a very dire one," his tone was almost casual.
"Potentially?" Harry was incredulous.
"Yes. Potentially," he said, the boredom in his voice appearing once again. "It appears to me as though the only eminent threat to our health right now is one another. So why don't we put off our school yard fight to another time. Let's say, right after we find our way out of here? I'd be more than pleased to exchange insults with you then. And for goodness sake, please stop breathing so heavily, you'll use up all the oxygen."
Harry thought for a moment. This was simply too much. Draco's calm demeanor made Harry even more uneasy. For his entire life, he had acted upon his gut feeling and so far, it hadn't betrayed him. Now he was being told to stifle the very mechanism by which he had always survived. The feeling was like that of a hare caught in a hunters trap. Run, his instincts told him, run! But as things stood, he didn't even have a light to run towards. So with a heavy sigh, Harry tried to collect himself.
"I'm assuming you don't have a wand," Harry finally decided to say.
"And what if I do?"
"Well then I'll just have to take it from you won't I? It's no good having you running around with one when you've never demonstrated a propensity for using it," Harry said as he felt his way closer to Draco.
"Okay, okay! I was bluffing, no need to get so personal. Really though, Harry, you need to relax, you know that? Loosen up a little."
"Relax? I'm stuck here in a cave with someone who has tried to kill me-"
"I never tried to kill you!" this time there was an element of seriousness and strain in Draco's voice.
"Oh, bullshit, Draco. You damned well have!" Harry exclaimed noting that he had struck a nerve.
"No! Never tried to kill… capture, hurt, even torture but never kill, I- I couldn't do that," Draco finished with a quiet strength.
"Ummm… anyway, my situation is fairly dire I'd say," Harry ended.
"Well I'm in a similarly shitty situation, if I do say so myself. So since we have soooo much in common why don't we try to do some problem solving, eh? What's the last thing you remember before ending up… well, wherever we are?" Draco asked.
Harry's mind was buzzing with the ridiculousness of his situation. Perhaps he was dreaming after all! He had felt pain in his dreams before and plenty of it. He closed his eyes tightly and pushed himself to either wake up or take control over his environment. Fly, Harry, fly! He willed himself, but despite his efforts, his feet remained firmly planted on the ground.
"Potter? Are you deaf? What is the last thing you remember?" Draco's flat drawl echoed through the cave.
"I don't know. I can't remember anything that feels recent, I know who I am and what I've done but the past feels fuzzy. I guess." His words trailed off awkwardly and he realized this with some discomfort. He suddenly felt violated. He had never (to his knowledge) had his memory compromised. "How about you?"
"Same, really," Draco said shortly.
"Well why don't you pick a memory that was particularly recent and momentous and start tracing forward from there?" Harry offered.
"Alright, I guess, um," Draco was quiet for a little while as though thinking. Harry wished more than anything, more than even wishing to be out of the cave that he could see but the darkness remained as oppressive as ever. "I was sitting inside of a waiting room in the ministry to talk to Kingsley Shacklebolt-"
"What the hell were you doing there?" Harry asked in an affronted tone.
"Well if you'd let me finish, I would tell you." Draco's tone was suddenly frigid again. Harry couldn't help but be silenced by it. Draco cleared his throat and continued, "As I was saying, I had an interview with him to become an auror-"
"What?" Harry was plainly horrified. "First off, I'm the head of that department so you would have to go through me. Second, in the extremely unlikely event that Kingsley overrode my decision, I would have no choice other than to hand in my two weeks' notice so that I could pursue my lifelong wish of living with wild blast ended skrewts!"
"Well then I suggest you invest in some protective gloves at the very least because I was given the job during the interview." Draco paused for Harry's next reaction but was met with silence and so he continued. "I can offer some explanation, Potter. I by no means love muggles now but my father's views were well- just plain crude. As a kid, I thought it was cool in a way, like my dad was some kind of, oh, I don't know, war hero I suppose. But after he had been imprisoned, my feelings started to shift. It may seem strange coming from a Slytherin, but I just couldn't justify using human beings, magical or not as a means to an end, as good of an end as that may have seemed to be." He conclude quietly and seemed to feel as though this answered everything, but to Harry it only brought up more questions.
"You almost killed Katie, and Ron! You allowed Dumbledore to be killed! A snake doesn't stop hunting it just slithers in a different direction!" Harry's anger was growing at an exponential rate.
"And tell me, Potter, please what should I have done? Let Voldemort kill my mother, my father, me? Everyone whom I cared for?"
"I wasn't aware that you cared for anyone but yourself, actually."
"Well you're wrong! And if you remember correctly, I didn't kill anyone! Not Katie, not Ron, and whether or not you believe it, I had a chance to kill Dumbledore; I had a chance to and I couldn't! I couldn't look into his pitiful face and say the stupid words! And I paid a price for that, and paid it dearly. You know this is the truth," Harry could hear Draco breathing heavily a few feet away. "You battled Voldemort on a handful of occasions but you never had to spend 'quality time' with him, did you? That barely human atrocity spent a year living with me, in my house. He was cruel and terrible and had I been stupid enough to try to retaliate, hell had I even hinted as being a malcontent I would've had fifty different wands all pointed in me and my parents' direction screaming fifty different killing curses. So please, please do not lecture me on how valiantly I could've or should've acted. Even in the worst of times for you, you always had Weasley and Granger. I had no one. No one could be trusted and every one of them was waiting for me to fuck up or show the slightest sign of weakness so that they could use me as a stepping stone."
Harry thought for a long time and tried to come up with a new retort but was left speechless. The air around him was cool and kept sending chills down his back and he suddenly realized he was soaking wet. The sound of water dripping and moving in the background lulled him into a sense of calm. He closed his eyes to ease the tension in his temples and tried to picture himself floating away from the situation maybe to a steamy jungle somewhere in another hemisphere. There were flowers in full bloom around the edges of the lake that he was drifting in. They were huge and beautiful from being sun drenched. Madder and jessamy and amaranthine colored petals danced in the wind and fell lightly onto the rippling glassy surface of the water. Birds were singing mellifluous melodies and he tried to join in but didn't know the words. The air was laden with the delicate scent of fresh and wild fruits that he yearned to taste. And the sun, it was brilliantly bright and brought life to everything it touched. It illuminated everything. This is where he went these days when the world pressed in too hard.
"I was a child when you knew me. A handsome and gifted child but a child nonetheless," Draco's voice brought Harry back to the situation at hand with a jerking snap. Reality was dark and absurd. To his embarrassment, he realized that Draco's voice was choked up as his nose sounded stuffy as if he had been crying.
"So," Harry's voice cracked slightly, "what did you do after you got the job?"
"Oh, right," he said gathering himself back together and clearing his throat. "Well I went home to my apartment where I live by myself. I cooked a dinner of rice and vegetables, I think I may have thrown some chicken in there too, and I ate."
"You didn't call anyone by floo to tell them about the job? Or do anything that would've given your location or actions away?" Harry asked. Anything could be a clue as to how they ended up where they were.
"Harry, who would I have to contact?" the question was posed with the slightest tone of sadness but more so with humor.
Harry smiled slightly in spite of himself, forgetting for a moment that Draco could not see it and said, "Sorry, go on."
"Well, after I finished eating I had the dishes clean themselves and went to the bedside- it's a studio you see- and I picked up a book I had been reading on jurisprudence and the Wizengamot and finished it. It took longer than usual because there was a cat in the ally meowing incessantly and I kept trying to shew it away."
"A cat? What did it look like?" Harry asked.
"I don't know, it was fairly ordinary. Just a grey cat. We get a lot of them in the alleyway next to my apartment. I think that it was about eleven o'clock at night and I was pretty tired so I turned out my light and went to sleep. That's really the last thing that I remember. When I woke up I was here and that was maybe a half hour ago." He paused momentarily and Harry waited.
"Well I guess that doesn't shed much light upon anything, does it?" said Draco.
"No, not really," Harry responded feebly attempting humor with his tone.
"Well how about you?"
Harry thought for a moment. "I went to work with Ron, like I always do. It was grey out as usual but I remember it being particularly chilly for this late in the spring-"
"Mind sparing me the finer details, dear?" Draco chirped in a saccharine voice.
"The answers very well may lie in the finer details so yes, I would mind. Anyway, we got to work and reviewed the new pocket manual for aurors. It had some new spells in it that Ron and I didn't know so after editing it to our liking I pocketed an extra copy to study them. We checked out a couple of complaints that seemed linked to dark arts but found that in the first instance the damage was being cause by an out of control gnome infestation, I mean I had never seen one so bad, they were burrowed under the entirety of the hedge garden and-"
"Please, Potter, continue! I'm on the edge of my seat!" yawned Draco.
"Alright, alright," Harry snapped back not unkindly. "The second had been caused by a nasty neighbor, with no priors, who had dropped out of Hogwarts in their 4th year because of failing marks. They simply didn't have the knowhow to do dark magic-let alone get us into this cave- but we brought him in for questioning anyway. Found nothing except that he was angry at the woman next door for not keeping her cat out of his yard. He had tried to perform a spell that would make the cats paws too heavy to climb the fence but accidently set it on the entire cat that was rendered immobile. Silly stuff really. When we finished and set him his court date, for animal abuse of all things, I asked Ron if he wanted to get dinner with me. He couldn't because he was taking Hermione out to celebrate a bit of progress she had made with S.P.E.W."
"Why didn't you get something with Ginny? You two are still an item aren't you?" Draco said. His tone suggested an element of disinterest. Harry figured he was trying his hand at being polite and decided to accept the motion no matter how insincere.
"Yes, we are, engaged in fact. But she's out for the week, what with Quidditch tryouts being held and the recruiting. She's the captain this year, youngest one in the history of the team. They were recruiting in America and Canada this week. So I went down the alley to a sandwich shop and had a chicken salad sandwich. I ate half and it was delicious."
"By golly, that's where I bought my veggies! Perhaps it was something we ate!" Draco chimed with almost spastic mock enthusiasm.
"I mean, possibly, but unlikely," Harry said, honestly not wanting to discount anything. This was met with an exasperated sigh from Draco but Harry went on undeterred. "I brought the other half home with me and got into my apartment and sat down at the table and…"
"And ate it? Slowly? Savoring every last morsel I hope?"
"No, that's just it. My memory stops there," Harry said with genuine concern.
"Well, Potter, might I suggest that you take a break from the wacky tobaccy? It sounds to me like you have some serious memory issues there," drawled Draco.
"Oh shut up, this is serious! I feel like my memory must have been compromised or something. I was unwrapping my sandwich but then things start to go dim. That's a tell tale sign of that spell and you should remember that if you're going to become an auror."
"Please, at least spare me the lecture." Draco's voice suggested that his patience was running thin. Harry thought it best for them to separate for a bit.
"Alright why don't we check the cave for possible exits. You walk that way, I'll walk this way."
"um, which way?" Draco chirped like an overly attentive student. Harry was briefly reminded of Hermione.
"Oh, just turn around and start walking!"
"Ow!" a thump indicated that Draco had hit something very hard with his head.
"Start walking, carefully," he fought off the urge to say something rather rude and added, "try to see with your hands."
They set off in their opposite directions. Harry couldn't believe that this hadn't occurred to him earlier. He had been so taken with how he had gotten there that he didn't think to look for a way out. He stumbled blindly through the darkness and found that the tunnel was fairly consistent in height and width. Suddenly he came to a break in the wall. Tentatively he felt about the floor to make sure that the ground remained even. The ground was not only more even in this part of the cave but soft, like moss. It was a terrific relief to his bare feet and he felt about further until he reached a wall. From what he could tell, it was a circular 'room' for lack of a better word. It was about a body length and a half deep and two body lengths across.
Reluctantly he left it and continued to wonder on. Draco's words ran through his head kicking up the dust off of old memories as they went. A pompous ass, no doubt repeating words he had heard his father use on countless occasions, offering his hand in partnership (for it could not really be deemed a friendship) only to be publicly rejected. A blond haired ferret, red eyes bulging in terror as a grizzly looking imposter of a man toyed with it sadistically. A sneering warning aimed at his muggleborn best friend in the woods by the quidditch world cup. And lastly, platinum hair streaked unnaturally with crimson, water falling on a groaning boy with his stomach cut open in too many places to count, Harry's hand trembling with the guilty wand protruding from it like a small sword. He shook the memories off and continued down the tunnel.
After walking and stumbling for what he guessed was twenty minutes, he suddenly heard footsteps in the distance. He froze and so did they. Neither he nor the culprit spoke for what seemed like minutes. His heart raced as he decided to speak.
"Who's there?" he called out trying to sound more confident than he felt.
"Oh! Am I glad it's you for once!" called back Draco's voice. The two laughed nervously with relief. Harry told Draco what he had found and asked him for his report.
"Pretty much the same thing actually, only I also found a pond of sorts. It's sunken into the ground and there's water trickling into it, but I can't tell where from. It's fairly large, maybe a quarter of the size of a quidditch pitch. But the water comes up to the opening. I checked the entire perimeter. Nothing, no way out. Right next to it was the same kind of room you described. Then I walked for about ten or fifteen minutes and found you."
Harry felt his heart fall. Escape seemed dreadfully unlikely without a wand and venturing into the dark waters may have been more of a death sentence than staying put. Even still, he was alive and at the moment that's all that really mattered. He tried to remind himself that he had confronted death in more much immediate ways before but this offered little comfort; last time it was a sacrifice he had been prepared to make for those he cared deeply about, now he may never know why.
"Well," Draco began, "let's not start feeling sorry for ourselves just yet. We have a soft place to sleep and a water supply. Those are good things. I feel like whoever put us here didn't intend to kill us."
"That is, unless they expected us to kill each other," Harry said, unconvinced.
"Well, as I've always been rather contrary and stubborn, might I suggest that we not oblige? At least not until the confrontation is on our own terms." Harry could hear Draco shifting the rocks on the floor with his feet as he spoke. He couldn't be more than a few feet away from him.
"I'm not promising anything," Harry said but his voice was lighter than he expected it to be.
"Well then I promise to try not to be a complete brat, if you promise not to bash my head against the cave wall. Fair enough?" Draco's tone, while modestly dripping with sarcasm was also lightening now. Harry felt odd being able to talk to Draco like this. It didn't seem altogether unnatural which made him feel even stranger.
"Does that mean you'll still be a partial brat?" Harry asked.
"Oh, shut up and take what you can get for once," came back Draco's exasperated reply.
"Alright then, I agree not to bash your head in," this seemed fair to him.
"Excellent. So where do we go from here, then?"
Harry thought for a moment then said "why don't you bring me to the lake or pond or whatever it was you found. I'd like to check that out."
"Okay, come with me," Draco started to walk off in an unseen direction. Harry tried to catch up with him but tripped almost immediately in his rush. "Come with me carefully," Draco mocked and Harry was instantly glad that he had said nothing more hurtful when Draco had hit his head earlier. Very suddenly, he felt a hand on his arm pulling him up. Once standing the hand slid down his arm to his hand and clasped it firmly.
"Don't make more of this than it is," Draco said sounding slightly embarrassed. "It's just no good having you tripping all over the place when we're having a hard enough time as it is." They walked like this for several minutes, hand in hand stumbling through the complete darkness of the cave. Draco's hands were soft, Harry was startled to find himself realizing. Soft and warm and dry. The occasional stumble forced them to collide and Harry realized that Draco's clothing was rather damp like his own. He felt it was best not to comment on the awkwardness of walking hand in hand through the darkness. It wasn't as though it was torture. Indeed, he found that he couldn't really describe how it made him feel aside from confused. All of his preconceived notions about Draco were finding themselves being challenged very suddenly. In a cave, wandless, definitely not dreaming, holding hands with Draco M- but once again, he found he couldn't even think his last name. Perhaps this could be a topic for conversation, albeit a potentially touchy one. He would have to handle it very gently.
"So, you said you had been disowned," the hand he was holding tensed momentarily then softened. "If you don't mind me asking, what happened exactly?"
"Are you asking out of curiosity or cruelty?" he asked.
"Are those my only choices?" Harry asked in an effort to make light of the conversation.
"Well, I know that it's not out of concern," Draco sounded as though he was speaking through clenched teeth.
"Well if concern is impossible, then curiosity, I suppose," said Harry, knowing full well that that was exactly why he was asking. After a few moments, Draco sighed deeply and began.
"My father had told me he had never killed anyone. I was curious and I asked him when I was about seventeen. It was after the fall of the Dark Lord and he was about to go to trial. I wanted to know the truth before everyone else did. I'm not sure why it mattered so much at the time. He said he would be fine and that he only aided as a social connection of sorts. I believed him, perhaps naively. I wanted to believe him. As you know it was subsequently proven through eyewitness accounts, veriteserum and in the end, his own wand that he had cast spells responsible for killing at least three muggle families and several wizards. That wasn't counting spells that could have been done when the Dark Lord took his wand away.
"I was absolutely horrified," Draco continued in the same unnervingly calm tone, "Not only had he murdered innocent people- children even- but he had lied to me. I was forced to re-evaluate my feelings towards him. How had the man that I had fondly called father been able to murder children," his voice started to strain but he quickly recomposed himself. "I went to see him after his sentence had been handed down. He was remorseless and felt as though the penalty of life was too harsh. I told him that if the dementors were still around he should have been given a Kiss, that life in prison was the second best option for him and that death would've been too kind. So he called me a traitor and disowned me. The end."
Despite the cold matter-of-fact way in which Draco had told the story Harry felt far sadder for him than he had ever thought to be possible. His mind drifted back to a distant memory of emotions he had once painfully felt: the conflict that he had faced upon finding that his father had been so terrible to Snape. His whole world had crumbled. He had felt as though he came from something pure, good and extraordinary and all of that had been shattered to him in those days. The idea that his father had flaws had been too much for him to bear. This of course had to be so much worse. If Harry had felt betrayed and shamed by a mere memory of his father then Draco must have been destroyed by the extensive courtroom evidence and public humiliation. And yet here he was, beside him, walking hand in hand speaking so casually about it that he may as well have been reading a story from the paper.
"So do you not have a last name now or something?" Harry asked finally.
"Don't be stupid, of course I have a last name. I took my mother's maiden name, as it was the easiest. I am now Draco Black. Much more charming than Draco Malfoy if I do say so myself."
Harry didn't respond to the last comment as the sound of water was getting louder. But before they reached it, Draco's hand jerked Harry to a stop.
"This is the room I was telling you about," Draco pulled Harry in. "Watch your head it comes down rather low." Harry could feel the rocky ceiling just over his head grazing his hair. Once again his feet found solace in the soft mossy texture that ostensibly carpeted the 'rooms.' He bent down, still holding Draco's hand and felt the floor.
"I feel like that must've been intentional," Draco commented almost to himself.
"What?" said Harry looking back towards the voice, seeing nothing.
"The floors in here are so soft," it sounded like he was sitting down, "like we're supposed to sleep in here. There are two of them apparently so I wouldn't be surprised. I mean I wouldn't have minded a pillow or two but it's better than the rocks, I suppose." He was sitting close enough to Harry for their knees to be touching. Harry felt a strange tingling in his stomach but was sure it wasn't discomfort. Being able to touch someone else, no matter who it was, made the darkness somehow more bearable and a little bit less frightening. It was like Draco's knee was a point of reference through which he could gain his bearings. He figured it didn't count for anything as long as he couldn't see Draco's face. That probably would have made this awkward, but at the moment the comfort was welcome. Draco stood quietly and the contact was gone as quickly as it had been established.
Grabbing Harry's hand to pull him up Draco spoke, "come on, let me show you the water before we relax." Harry acquiesced and followed. The sound of trickling water became louder and louder though it was never as oppressive as the darkness. It echoed and bounced off of the walls of the cave like children at play and its sound was more relieving than maddening. It was nice to hear a noise that was not cause by himself or by Draco, he thought as he closed his eyes again willing himself to see where he was stepping. They stumbled to the edge of the water and sat next to it knees touching once again. Draco spoke first.
"You don't mind do you? The knees thing-" he started tentatively before Harry interrupted.
"No, not at all. I mean I'm not excited about it or anything but I think it helps somehow," he trailed off awkwardly once more. He seemed to have acquired a knack for this.
"All you needed to say was 'no,' Potter."
They sat there for a long time, not sure what to do with themselves next. All of their options seemed to have been exhausted. Harry felt as though he was doing fairly well considering the situation he was in. he had accepted the fact that he was not in danger in any immediate sense, though the idea that his memory had been violated still upset him. The idea of his home being violated upset him more. As he cleaned his wounded ankle with the chilled water he wondered if Ron or Hermione had taken note of his absence yet, or indeed if anyone had. He wondered if they were safe. Ginny surely was, as she was far away somewhere in the North American continent. But then, he thought, she probably would come home once she found out that Harry had gone missing. With Ginny's freckled face in his mind he felt his insides twist. When he did get out of here, or rather if he found a way out of here what state would he find the world in upon his return. It had taken a lot to accept the weight of the world's safety on his shoulders and now that he had is was becoming increasingly hard to realize that while he had been chosen to alleviate one of its more pressing problems he could hardly tackle them all. Prejudice still ran rampant through communities whether they were magical or not. The pressure on his temples began to increase again. As if sensing this Draco finally spoke.
"I'm exhausted from all of this," he said yawning deeply. "Really this hasn't been the worst day of my life but certainly one of the more traumatic. Wouldn't you agree?"
Harry nodded, then realizing once more that Draco could not see him, grunted in an agreement. His head was spinning and upon standing he felt dizzy. Draco once again felt for his hand and upon finding it pulled him in the direction of the room closest to the water.
"Why don't we stay in the same one tonight? Just in case something happens, we can both wake up, safety in numbers and all that," suggested Harry logically. If the idea of vulnerably sleeping in the cave made his stomach upset then the idea of sleeping alone threatened to make him sick. Draco would hardly be his first choice as a roommate but as the situation stood he genuinely did not seem to be a threat. While he could hardly say that he trusted the other man, he also hardly felt threatened by him. Physically, from what he remembered he was taller and slightly broader than he was and seeing as they were both wandless, a physical confrontation would be foolish of Draco to pursue.
"If you want to," Draco said. His voice betrayed none of his feelings on the issue but did not sound offended either so Harry admitted that he wanted to. He sank gratefully into the mossy room, once more affording his feet respite from the rocky path they had been walking. He laid down on his back and found himself almost immediately relaxed. He had worried that it would be uncomfortable and though his bed at home surpassed it without much effort, it was not the least comfortable place Harry had ever rested. He heard Draco settle about a foot and a half away from him and was comforted, not for the first or last time by the fact that he was not alone in the cave.
Thanks are due to thebrunnetteone for the BETA!
The second chapter is very nearly done, so expect that in another week, maybe less!
Please comment, this is the first fanfic that I have ever shared with the public so feedback is welcome!
I already have the outline written out for the entire story but feedback can be taken into account as far as character development and questions!