Title: White
Author: xxForgotten
Pairing(s): HP/DM
Setting: Post-war.
Warning(s): Slash.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but my currently stuck brain, and all that comes from it.
Summary: There is nothing left- nothing, nothing but a white abyss.
A/N: I've decided to write a series in color, the first being Red that I posted a year or so ago. I know I haven't been writing for a while- I hope this wasn't too disappointing :) Read and review!
You know what they always say; that the aftermath is worse than the storm. The sentence repeats itself within the confines of your head, over and over again, as you lie sprawled across the cold, unforgiving marble- or so you suppose it is marble, because it is covered with far too much ash and grime and dust and blood and goodness-knows-what-else for you to be sure. You don't know how long you've been there, but every single muscle, every sinew in your body hurts when you try to move. You shut your eyes and try to block out the panicked screams, the terrifying sounds of something exploding- something far, far bigger than that china vase ten feet behind you.
You try to hum a song, to calm yourself down, to forget the fact that the world is crumbling to dust around you, that there must be something very, very wrong because you simply can't move- only to find that you have forgotten all the words, and that the melodies have been reduced to shards of memory.
You lie there, locked in the terrors of your own memory, for what seems like an eternity. The screams never stop, and you know from the way they grate against your eardrums, the way they etch their scars onto your heart, that restful nights have already become a thing of the past, a luxury that has ceased to be. Seconds drag into minutes, minutes into hours. Somehow you manage to fall asleep amongst the debris as time passes, hoping that maybe you won't ever have to wake again. But the images you see in your dreams are even more terrifying, and you jolt awake with a start, only to realize that the screaming has given way to an eerie silence, a calm that seems unbelievably out of place.
Is this the end, you wonder, or is it just the eye of the storm? You open your eyes, and see nothing, nothing but white.
But no, this is not the end.
The white you see is not the white of innocence, of purity, of new beginnings. It is the dirtied, sickening white of hospital walls... or, in this case, dust and ash from the first-floor ceiling that seems to have collapsed upon itself. It covers everything; conceals everything- some kind of a crude, graceless parody of the first forgiving snows of winter. You cough- the very motion causing shockwaves of pain to course through your body- and try to move again, only to no avail.
A hand suddenly appears through the whiteness; a hand, stained with blood and foul magic. You look up at its owner, and meet a tired gaze of clear emerald. You are mesmerized for a moment; the color pierces through your soul and touches something within you. You blink in confusion as you try to make sense of the world, try to place the identity of the hand's owner, try to find a sole voice of reason. The clear emerald continues to apprehend you, unwavering. It is an anchor, you realize, a solid force to hold onto as everything falls apart. You try to smile, only it comes out as some kind of a leer because your face isn't accustomed to smiling, or grinning, or making any sort of expression really, anymore. Yet the emerald remains, silent, encouraging.
You try to communicate that no, it's not that you want to reject his help, it's just that you seem to be kind of paralyzed, and something unreadable passes over his face. He straightens up, mutters something under his breath, and suddenly you can breathe again. You try to splay your fingers out, and are met with relief when they spread out, ever so slowly, against the floor. You grasp his hand then, and he pulls you up. He stares at you for a moment, and you meet his gaze, expressing your unspoken gratitude. He smiles slightly, turns, and walks away.
You only come to take in your surroundings then, the dust-covered bodies littered all across the floor, eerily reminiscent of some sort of a contemporary pompeii. Bile rises in your throat, and you almost cry out at him to please wait, wait for you. Almost, or so you think. It is only until he turns around that you realize that you have spoken the words aloud. You walk over, trying to focus on his face instead of the many others at your feet, frozen in silent screams.
The night air is almost like a kiss of life after the stifling air in the house. You turn around to look at him properly for the first time, and it all comes back to you.
"No one?" You ask, your voice so hoarse it is foreign to your own ears.
"No one," He affirms, the words echoing in the darkness. "No one but us."
So this is it, you think to yourself. This is the end, the end that was predicted so many years ago. A lump forms at the base of your throat. You swallow hard.
No one.
Out of the hundred and fifty from the light, the hundred or so from the dark, not one remained. None apart from them.
He lets out a tiny sob, and you notice that he is shaking. Has he been shaking all this time, you have no idea. He takes a deep breath, and the tears tumble down his cheeks, silent. You do not say anything- there is nothing left to be said. Your tears pour down with his.
"I should check Hogwarts," He mumbles, and raises his red-rimmed eyes to meet yours.
You realize that he is waiting for an answer.
"I'll go with you," You tell him.
You disapparate together.
At Hogwarts you find that the castle is nothing like you remember- whole towers are missing, the waters of the giant lake are pitch black, the grass is charred, darkened, with fire if not with blood. But there are survivors.
You cry with relief.
From then on you spend almost every moment together, cleaning up the aftermath, burying the deceased, helping the wounded, rebuilding all that has been destroyed. Bit by bit you feel as if your world is coming back together, brick by brick, tile by tile. Sometimes you manage to get a full three hours' sleep without being awakened by the screams- the screams that, unfortunately, still plague him every single hour, waking or in slumber. You slip a dreamless sleep potion into his juice, and almost smile when he greets you the next morning, looking a little more human than he has become in the past few months.
The past doesn't matter, you come to accept. Besides, the past is too painful for either of you to think about anyway.
As it turns out, after all the deaths have been tallied, none of his friends have survived, and neither have yours, because they were all in the frontlines. They were the ones who killed each other. He is impassive, emotionless. A single tear slips down his cheeks, but then he wipes it away and it is as if nothing happened at all, only that would be the greatest understatement of the millennium, perhaps. You put a hand on his shoulder, he closes his eyes and leans into your touch for support. You do not cry, because all of the tears have already been dried.
A spring day months later finds you at the great lake, remembering the black water that was there that night, the blood that was draining into it like a stream. But the water is clear now, the grass green once again. But you cannot unsee what you saw, and you know that neither can he. He sits quietly next to you, staring into the distance, and you wonder what he sees when he stares like this into the unknown, into the future. Only you don't say anything, because you know that he won't tell.
The two of you have slipped into a routine now. He depends on you, and you depend on him. The others that have survived haunt the halls, and sometimes during the nights you still hear the heart-wrenching sobs, the muffled screams. Few words pass between you, but it doesn't matter, because you understand each other perfectly anyway. It is just the two of you now- you and him. And the silence.
You gradually learn to read him as well as you know yourself. You learn to look away, to pretend to not have seen anything when he comes across a familiar item in the wreckage, one that perhaps, in a separate life, once belonged to one of the Weasleys.
You sleep in the same room, a room in what used to be the Ravenclaw dormitories. Everyone that has remained sleeps there, the wing that has sustained the least damage. You sleep in the same room, on beds side by side, because both of you get scared in the nights, when the crows start cawing. It is an unspoken agreement- one look at his haunted green eyes, and you just nod.
Neither of you have given much thought to the future at all, until suddenly all the work is done, and you're all set to leave in a day's time. You celebrate dazedly, half-heartedly in your shared room with a bottle of filched firewhiskey, and he takes out a photo album filled with photographs of his parents, smiling and waving at you. Only the lens must have been dirty because the photos blur before your eyes, fading into shadows of black and white. A drop of moisture falls onto the page.
"Oh, Harry." You say.
He looks at you, and the feeling is there again, the feeling that you felt on the first day when your eyes met his. When the world stopped spinning and all you could do was stare, enraptured in the depth of his gaze, one aged far beyond his years. You barely notice that his eyes are red too. He smiles faintly, and something in your chest twists painfully.
He leans in, and time slows to a crawl. You smell the firewhiskey on your mingled breaths, feel- hear, almost, your hearts beating in time. You swear that they connect for a second, where your pain flows as one through your veins.
You forget to breathe.
"Goodbye," He says.
Your heart constricts, as well as your throat.
He turns away.
Early the next morning, you wake underneath a canopy of fading stars to an empty room. The space next to you is dented, still warm, and you know that he slept next to you last night. His belongings are gone. You take a deep breath, and realize belatedly that for the first time since the war, you slept for an entire night without jolting awake, drenched in cold sweat.
The dying embers in the fireplace remind you of the fire in his eyes.
You leave King's Cross station alone, and return to an empty house, ready to collapse. Two trembling house elves sob at your feet- the closest things to familiarity you will ever feel again, you note. The manor is all yours now, all of its winding passageways, whispering corridors and the dark artefacts hidden within. You despise the sight of it, and resolve to sell it as soon as possible. You pack that very night.
You rent a modest house downtown, and almost give clothes to both elves before they start their flood of tears once again, begging you to let them stay, you the last of the Malfoy line that they have always served. You like being alone, but give in all the same, because- well, you couldn't refuse, could you?
You like the house, light and simple and airy. You like the way the sunlight streams in through the thin curtains, the way the soft breeze lets them flutter through its grasp. You like the white walls, clean and pure and fresh. There are no portraits in the house. You spend time in the backyard too, sometimes, tending to the flowers and enjoying the way the sun feels on your face. Before long, you have a nice little garden, with a small swingset that you built yourself because you remember that sitting on the swings and soaring towards the sky was something you always longed for, but denied, as a child. You are your own person now, and you spend all your time trying to pick up the pieces, to rebuild yourself once again.
You don't hear from him in almost a year.
Then one day, as you pick out some books to add to your rapidly growing collection, you feel a hand on your shoulder. You turn, and see nothing but white. Endless, blinding white. The sun is in your eyes. He moves then, to block the light, and you realize that it's him.
"Hello," He says.
"Hello," You echo.
The sunlight forms a halo behind his head.
He holds out his hand.
"It's nice seeing you again," He tells you.
You glance at his hand, and up again at his face. At his glowing eyes. He's been well, you think.
Your heart twists inside your chest once again, and then you remember the broken pieces that he left behind, when you were both alone.
You stare.
He drops his hand slowly, and his expression turns sad. "I'm sorry," He tells you.
"Me too," You whisper.
He turns once again, as he has done so for so many times already in your dreams, and walks away. You look dazedly at his retreating figure.
"Wait," You call. "Wait."
He turns around, his facial features lost in the light. You walk over, as you did so many months ago, filled with fear and uncertainty. He waits, as he waited, silent. Encouraging. You reach where he is standing.
"I'll go with you," You say. "I'll go with you. Wherever."
He smiles.
So do you.