Title: Triad
Author: Psykiapa
Rating: PG-13 sounds safe ...
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Disclaimer: It's not mine. At all.
Summary: After the death of a lover, two people go looking for replacement.
Author's Note: Okay this is ... interesting. I'm attempting to write in 2nd person, and at the same time experimenting in style quite a bit here. Any and all comments are more than welcome.

Triad

His skin is too coarse. You know this, and somehow he can see it in your eyes. That's why he covers his face in shame; that's why he keeps coming back to you.

The war took many casualties, but in the end, his side won. You stopped caring about that sort of thing long ago, and that's a part of the reason he can still bring himself to come all this way, every Saturday. Every Saturday you forget who he is, and somehow dark, dark hair transforms into silver and his smaller, compact body lengthens to fit your taste.

You wonder if your dark skin pales and your dark eyes burn silver for him.

Wordlessly, he traces his hands across your face, staring up at you. His eyes are glazed over, and you can't tell if that's from the momentary pain of penetration or a living dream he's convinced himself of.

The two of you never speak when you're together. You're afraid that if you do, this delicate spell might be lifted, and your tryst will no longer be with Draco Malfoy, but with an entirely new and scary breed of monster.

Aside from the occasional mindless sentence that falls from your lips in the heat of sex, you refuse to speak to him. Every time he rings your bell, you go to the door and let him in silently. You don't know exactly how this all happened – maybe it had something to do with the mission you'd been given by your one-time Lord. But whenever your thoughts stray to the logic behind your train wreck, you delicately push them away. Every time you think of asking him to tell you how this happened, you firmly bite down on his flesh and don't think any more of it.

He never speaks either.

"Hello."

The word is tentative, and you nod curtly in return. Your mind reels, panic taking your heart, but he must see something in your eye, because he kisses you forcefully and starts exactly where you left off last time.

You wait until he's almost asleep, hoping he'll take your words for part of a dream.

"Thank you."

He has that stricken look on his face again, that look that tells you he knows there's something wrong with this. You let him in anyway and soften those war-plagued eyes with a shot of Firewhiskey. Zabini Manor has never, since its construction, housed a true lover. You never let the other one (with the fearsome silver eyes) come here. You'd always gone to his Manor.

But you always let Harry in, and Harry never stays the night.

"Don't you have to work in the morning?"

"Yes."

He mumbles into the pillow, hiding his face from you and clutching at the sheets.

"Surely you aren't staying for another round –"

"I'm tired. I'd like to sleep here."

He burrows further underneath the covers, and you don't know what to say.

And suddenly it all changes. He's coming 'round more often now, and not only under cover of night. You don't keep track of the days anymore, but you think that maybe this started sometime around Valentine's Day, but what use would he have of an idiotic holiday?

Draco had always hated Valentine's Day.

But this new Draco is something to watch out for, something to reckon with.

"Would you like to go for a walk with me?"

"What? Now?"

"Yes. It's dark out, there's no one to see the dreadful pair we make."

He chuckles a little bit, amiable for the first time.

"I don't want to leave the house."

His eyes are suddenly pained, but he manages to level your gaze.

"I don't think you get out enough."

You will always miss him; that much was true from the beginning. You still don't know exactly what Harry's relation to him was, but you know that it could have been true love. You also know that what you and he had was never love … not in the strictest definition of the word, anyway. Harry's just as damaged as you are, and you're both very different people from when that silver man had played you. You claim that you weren't such a fool that you fell in love with him.

But he and Harry could have been in love.

They probably were.

Your romance with Harry was never something as concrete as the fairy tales would have led you to believe. It developed gradually. You don't know how, and you don't know why, but it happened, and that's that.

That's how you managed to chase away the ghost. You latched onto something real.