Candles blown out by a wind he never saw or even felt go by.
He didn't even know what had changed at first. He just knew that suddenly he was numb. He walked on eggshells at home and worked on autopilot. And when wizards were pointing wands at you on a regular basis, autopilot could be dangerous.
For weeks, Harry would wake and stare at himself in the mirror. Cleaning his teeth, attempting to tame his hair. The reflection had no answers for him, and didn't look any different than it had for twenty three years.
He didn't know what it was until she explained it to him.
He came home to a silent house, and realized it wasn't really home anymore. Harry stood at the door, back throbbing from a badly aimed curse that had caused his early return. He wondered when Ginny and their home had become just placeholders for something.
The sound of a mug clinking into a counter finally had him moving into the kitchen. There was a Daily Prophet folded on the table at Ginny's elbow. Her eyes were vacant, though, staring into space above their stove. For a moment, he wondered when the color of her hair had stopped being a sunset in his head, and just became ginger. When her cheekbones had stopped telling him the secrets of the universe. She blinked and seemed to come back to life. When she gestured to the chair in front of her, he sat.
The silence stretched longer than it used to, but it felt familiar. Finally, her voice, wobbling and scratchy like she was holding back tears, broke it. "I think you should go, Harry. I've already packed your things."
For a moment, he debated just getting up and leaving. But Harry Potter wasn't the type to leave without answers, even if he didn't know if they mattered anymore. "What's wrong with me?" They've been married for three years now; he knew she wouldn't have any problems connecting the dots.
A few breaths, each a little more shaky than the previous, and then a harsh laugh. When she spoke, though, her voice was under control. "You don't love me. I don't know when or why, but you don't. And I can't love you enough for both of us."
"Oh." The pieces slotted into place and he suddenly cared, at least a bit. He cared enough to wish it weren't true, to wish he could take away her pain. But a hateful thought was playing through his mind when he realized he didn't care enough to try to fix it.
There really was nothing left to say after that. As he was grabbing his bags from the bedroom, he gave a short laugh, devoid of humor. It had struck him that his marriage, his years long relationship with a beautiful woman he knew he had loved once, ended with the word oh. As if someone had told him the punch line to a joke he didn't get.
Grimmauld Place looked just as he remembered it and he settled in for a few weeks of self-inspection.
The first night, he debated getting drunk but instead just played chess with himself.
The second night saw Ron stepping out of the fireplace and punching Harry in the jaw without even a hello. Harry just took it. He didn't fight back for any of the punches. When Ron calmed, Harry poured him a glass of whiskey and then found himself a pain potion to drink before his own glass.
"Why?" Ron asked after an hour of silence.
Harry just shook his head. "I don't know."
Ron glared at him and clenched his fist. The whiskey had just managed to dull the pain completely and he didn't really want to be hit again. "That's a shit reason."
"The only one I've got." He looked his friend in the eye and Ron was the first to look away. "I didn't mean to, if that helps."
His hand relaxed and he finished his glass. "Not really, no." There was silence again, but it didn't last nearly as long. "As an older brother, I'm angry. But as your friend, I'm worried."
Harry had no idea what to say to that, so he just stared at his glass before filling it again. He didn't have anything to do tomorrow. Nursing a hangover would at least give him something to do with his day, now that he had quit his job as an Auror.
Ron left, stumbling drunk at past four in the morning, only managing to say his address into the fireplace after multiple rehearsals.
Harry fell asleep on the couch, the mostly empty bottle of whiskey tucked under his arm. The hangover was everything he had expected it to be.
The next weeks passed in something of a blur, only highlights for him to look back over. He discovered that divorce could be a quick process and that the press heard about it even quicker. He discovered after a night at a muggle bar that he did actually still feel attraction to women. Apparently, men, too, but he was drunk enough at that point that it never had the impact he would have expected.
It was July when he realized he wasn't happy with drinking and being alone. Ron couldn't be around very often, as Hermione had just delivered the baby and refused to be let him bugger off. Ron also wanted to make sure that Ginny knew he wasn't taking Harry's side in all this. Not that Harry had realized there were sides to take, but if there were, Ron shouldn't abandon his sister.
He wasn't perfectly sure how he ended up in McGonagall's office, but it felt right so he went with it. Feeling had started to make a rare appearance, and so he tended to treasure it when it happened. When she said she needed a new Defense teacher, he had offered to take it. She accepted and he was on his way back to the castle in August.
The staff party held before term was a little awkward. Mostly just because he realized a large part of the teachers were now people he had gone to school with. Justin Finch-Fletchley was the Charms instructor, and Draco Malfoy was the potions instructor.
Malfoy looked good. His hair was a little longer, but not by much. He still had porcelain skin, but he smiled more often now, and it seemed to have lost a lot of the scorn it used to hold. They had an amicable conversation even, and he had called him Professor Potter without a sneer.
The year passed rather agreeably, with more conversations held between Malfoy and himself. They bickered over things, but settled into a kind of friendship that was actually easy.
The next year was when things went awry.
Harry had already slept with the Divination instructor and the new Transfiguration teacher his first year. Greta could have turned into a relationship, but she had started asking him to write down his dreams so that she could go through them for meaning. That hadn't been so bad, but she also started telling him about hers. In which they got married and had children. He was just off a divorce and honestly didn't want that at the moment. At least she had been calm.
Jason had been different, though. Everything was fine until he tried to come to bed as a dog. Harry drew a very firm line at bestiality, along with a few other things, and had run as fast as he could out of that tower.
Thankfully, they both had respected his wishes and Witch Weekly had had to deal with nothing more juicy than his new job. At least since the time he was spotted coming out of the muggle bar, two months after his divorce, with a man firmly attached to him in a manner that would have been impossible to pretend was misconstrued. So, he hadn't tried. He'd had offers from Wizard Weekly to do a cover shoot, now.
Up until this point, he'd been able to avoid seeing Ginny for the most part. She was at Hugo's birthday party, but with so many other people there it had been easy to avoid speaking with each other. He actually made an effort to see Dudley on the holidays, so even if not seeing the Weasley's left a sour spot in his stomach, he managed not to see that particular one. And avoid Molly's attempts to get him to 'fix' his relationship.
His good year and a half streak was completely pulverized when she walked into the preterm party that year. She was sporting a sparkly ring that blazed like the sun from her hand that sat on Justin's arm. It took a few moments, but he finally manned up and congratulated her. Her smile made something in his chest relax. "Thank you! We haven't been together long, but it felt right." There were unspoken words in there. emLike it wasn't with you anymore./em
Harry tucked away the thought and then smiled at her. "I'm happy for you. He can make you happy." emLike I wasn't anymore./em
After that, Harry found himself drinking near the punch bowl. McGonagall was giving him looks, so he knew he'd have to retire to his own room before long. She did not approve of staff getting drunk, even if there were no students around. He was staring at the stones of the floor, wondering if he even had anything alcoholic in his rooms anymore, when a hand graze his elbow. He startled and looked into the pale eyes of Malfoy. The corner of his lips was turned down a bit, but he didn't seem to be angry.
"Was seeing her painful?" For a moment, Harry thought he would rather drink poison than tell him anything. Then he remembered that they weren't in school anymore. At least, not as students. They had managed to start a friendship. Malfoy had told him some of his secrets, though never very detailed.
He swallowed, ready to speak. But he didn't know what to say. He wouldn't say that it had been painful, but it hadn't been pleasant. He couldn't get anywhere with decoding his thoughts and ended up just shaking his head slowly. Malfoy saw it for the confusion that it was and gave a little smile. "If you're interested, I have plenty of alcohol in my rooms. I think everyone is sufficiently involved in other things that you can leave now and they shouldn't notice."
Harry nodded and slipped out, Malfoy on his heels.
As they walked down the hall, Malfoy gave a chuckle. "I've always hated those things. Very rarely is there a new teacher, but everyone comes together sniffing out alliances like we're going to war." The last word sounded odd. Harry knew that Malfoy was remembering the last time Hogwarts had been to war. He could tell because he tucked his arms behind his back, as he always did when talk of the war or Voldemort or Death Eaters came up. Harry thought that maybe it was because it hid his tattoo from his sight.
Harry bumped him with his elbow and the two men shared a smile, one sweet, and the other thankful.
The dungeon suite was more appealing than Harry had thought it would be. There were thick rugs on the floor and the walls were softened with drapes. They were all silver and black, so the colors were a bit more vibrant when they appeared. The reds of the bedroom stood out before Malfoy closed the door. Then, he removed his robe, standing in slacks and a button up shirt. After rolling the sleeves up, he poured two glasses of amber liquid and handed one to Harry.
It struck him that he never would have imagined the boy he went to school with, the boy he fought a war, for, with, and against, would turn into the man in front of him. He was calmer, but the sense of it was softer than the angular silence that had marked his last year as a student. Apparently there was just enough alcohol in his system for the filter between his thoughts and tongue to be faulty. "How did you become you?"
Malfoy took a sip and sat on the couch. Harry sat beside him, suddenly really wanting to know the answer. "I … grew up." Harry gave a skeptical laugh and he continued. "I realized I didn't really want to be the way I was turning out. So I stopped thinking as my father had taught me. I started thinking like – someone better."
"Like who?"
"You." Harry had trouble finding that one. His look must have said as much, because Draco looked down at his hand and then took a few more swallows. "I was cruel, to you and your friends. I did terrible things. But you saved me from a burning room when you could have just left me there. You offered forgiveness when I didn't really deserve any. You spoke at my trial, earning my freedom. You didn't have to do that, and I didn't deserve it. So I decided I should do something to deserve it."
"I'm not that great, you know." Harry finally said it after the silence had gotten oppressive. Now it was Draco's turn to look disbelieving. "Yeah, I saved the wizarding world. But a lot of people died that shouldn't have."
Draco put his hand out, toward Harry, but dropped it before he got too close. Maybe the conversation was just too personal for touching.
Harry gave a laugh, a short bark of a sound that seemed to echo when it had no right to. "And my wife left me because I stopped loving her. And I don't know why. Or how. Or even when." He tipped his glass to the other man. "See? Not that great."
"You wished her a happy marriage, though."
"It was a marriage that shouldn't be happening because I should still love her." Harry finished his glass.
"Do you want to?" The words were spoken softly, almost too quiet to hear as Draco's back was turned away from him as he refilled both their glasses.
He thought about it. If he were still with Ginny, he never would have quit being an Auror. He would never be teaching here, never be friends with Draco. He never would have figured out that he didn't mind all that much if his hands touched the silky curves of a woman's hips or the hardness of a man's chest. "No, I don't think so."
When Draco returned to the couch, there was an almost forced cheerfulness to him that hadn't been there before. "So tell me, when did you discover you liked men?"
Harry groaned and pushed him. "The day that awful picture got taken." Draco just laughed and watched him, clearly wanting the story. "I was numb, so I was drinking a lot. I was sick of being caught by the Prophet, so I decided to go to a muggle bar. A man tried to pull me and I realized I wasn't repulsed or even indifferent. It sounded intriguing. So I let him. The rest, my friend, is history, blasted onto every wizarding newspaper in Europe."
He laughed some more, but somehow managed to get a few words out. "Mine wasn't as funny."
The confused look on Harry's face set him to laughing harder. "I always knew I preferred men. I just knew how important it was to my father that I be the perfect pure-blood. Marry a woman with a good family and produce heirs. When I stopped thinking like him, it followed that I could be gay and it wouldn't mean the world was ending. Although, that fight was spectacular." A shadow crossed his eyes and, for a second, the amusement slipped from his face. It was back almost before Harry was sure he saw it, but he had.
Harry felt bad for him. Obviously he didn't know the details, but it sounded like things had gone badly. And that was something that Harry would never have to deal with. His family was gone, when it came down to it. Ron and Hermione hadn't seemed to mind and that was really it for him. The fact that Draco had so few people and that they hadn't been accepting was sad.
Another few glasses in and they were trying to play Wizarding Chess. It was going wrong in so many ways because they were both a little too drunk to make sound decisions. Eventually, the pieces gave up and staged a revolt. Draco and Harry didn't really mind.
"It's late. I should probably be getting back to my rooms." Harry had just spotted the time. It was three in the morning and tomorrow was the last day to prepare for classes. He didn't really feel like moving, though. He had realized he was okay with Ginny getting remarried and being a teacher, not an auror, and with being friends with Draco. He was drunk enough to worry that if he left it would change, though.
Draco started putting the pieces back in their case. After a few pieces, Harry started helping him. Apparently, the knight was especially angry over their incompetence, because he took his sword and opened a gash on Draco's hand. It bled and Harry flicked the knight into the box before he pulled his robe to cover the wound. "I have towels."
Harry rolled his eyes and then told him to shut up. With a smile, he did.
It took him by surprise.
All the candles were lit again.
Draco was drunk enough to take a second before looking up, but apparently sober enough to sense something. Harry was just looking at him, wondering when it had happened and how he felt about it. He didn't know how he felt or how he should. Draco's eyes trailed from his eyes to his lips and back again. Harry licked them, wondering what he was thinking.
It didn't take long for him to figure it out.
"Don't you dare kiss me." His voice was cracked and brittle, broken and sweet. "Don't you dare, Potter." The name came back, all the bitter connotations evident as it spewed across the sudden chasm between them. He ripped his hand out of Harry's, not caring that his hand was now dripping blood onto the carpet beneath them.
The candles were out again. Harry knew why, though. It was a soft wind, but biting cold. It was shaped by Draco's soft lips, words that he never stumbled over or had to force. "You will not do that to me. You will not have that power."
Harry was still trying to figure out what exactly had happened. One second, it seemed that the world was starting to make sense again. And then the next, nothing made sense at all. Things were worse than before. At least before he'd just been numb. This was a grinding pain in his bones that he didn't know what to do about because he didn't know why. He had been rejected and somehow it felt like Draco had pulled his nerves through his skin.
He blinked then walked out. He left Draco standing, breathing through his nose and staring at the wall over his shoulder, bleeding on his pretty carpet.
It didn't make sense, but Harry could feel the blood on his robe even after he was curled in his bed and the robe was crumpled in a corner. His toes were cold and felt like ice cubes when he pressed them to his own flesh. His body ached and he was left to try to figure out what had happened. Again.
It was only as he was replaying the words that he realized he was depressingly sober. What could he have meant? What power?
The thoughts followed him into troubled dreams. For a moment, he thought about bringing them to Greta, but the idea lost all appeal when he thought about it. He didn't want to reveal the turmoil over a never-but-wanted lover to an ex-lover. The shame would probably be enough to kill him where he stood.
It sat in his skin and festered and kept him in the shower trying to wash it away. It chipped away at his control, almost making him leave for the Christmas holidays. But he stayed. Because McGonagall had asked and because he had seen Draco sign up to stay.
The first day that most of the people had left, he was sitting in the library. He was trying to figure out what book one of his students had read that said werewolves were susceptible to garlic. Harry had become hyperaware of Draco, sensing him almost before he saw him. His back tightened when he knew he had walked in.
He didn't think he'd say anything. But it came out as Draco was leafing through a book. They hadn't spoken since that night, and Harry didn't understand why he hadn't cared so much that he ruptured. Harry certainly had. "What power?"
Draco's hands stilled and his shoulders tensed. He looked up from his book, but only to, presumably, try to set the bookshelf on fire with his gaze. For a moment, Harry thought he would answer. It passed when Draco closed the book and left the library, not once looking in his direction.
The need to know didn't go away, but seemed to grow more pointed. Instead of a dull ache in his stomach, it was a sharp fiery thing that gnawed on him. He took to staring at Draco whenever they were in a room together. It was juvenile, but he obviously hadn't reacted favorably to words.
It was Christmas Eve before he broke. Harry wasn't even sober enough to notice. He had holed up in his room, claiming a headache, to spend time with his liquor. He hadn't drank since that night, so he didn't see the harm in a little white lie over the holidays.
Someone knocked on the door, and for a moment, Harry stared at it. Finally, his voice a little rusty, he spoke. "Please leave."
"No."
Never had a word gotten him up so quickly. The door was open and pulled back before he really thought about it, allowing entrance to Draco.
They stared at each other for a while. He didn't know why Draco was silent, but he knew why he was. He wanted to hear the answer to the question, but he also wanted to forget he ever asked it. He regretted that single instant of light. He'd rather be friends than nothing. Even when they'd hated each other it was better than this cool indifference.
His hands were behind his back, but they were clenched as they never had been before. His jaw was tight, his shoulders were tense. Everything about him spoke of tension and an iron will. Finally, he licked his lips and started to speak. His eyes never left the floor, even when Harry moved closer to him. "When Voldemort said you were dead, I realized exactly how badly I didn't want to be by his side. When everything turned out… Alright in the end? I realized it hadn't been because he was so evil. He was evil and I hated him for what he had done to my family and to everyone. But I hated him most because he had killed you."
Harry wanted to speak, but he didn't think now was the time for interruptions. "After I stopped thinking like my father, I had to build myself. And you were always there. You're the mortar between my bricks, Harry." He looked up then, and looked him in the eye. "If you kissed me that night, you'd have the power to break me again. I just managed to complete my own construction and I can't have you because you'll rip it all apart again."
He made to go, but Harry stepped in front of him. "Who says I'd break you?" He had broken eye contact, only looking at the floor. It was too much, way too much.
Draco looked at him, he could feel it. His skin was stretching and blistering and breaking open under his gaze. "Who says you wouldn't?" Harry jerked when the door closed behind him.
It took him days to think it through. Draco loved him and so he couldn't have him. Because Harry could shatter him.
He wanted to tell him that he was willing to try, but he couldn't. If he said he was, it would just be telling him that Harry didn't care if he did break him. He didn't want to break him or have him think he wouldn't mind. He wanted to tell him that if he really loved Harry, he'd be willing to take the risk. But that was selfish and he discarded it as soon as it came to mind.
When his first class of the morning had trickled into their seats, he realized he had a plan. It was even a kind of good one, if one left out the yawning abyss of failure that waited under the tightrope he planned to walk.
Classes couldn't end soon enough for him, and it was only his desire to never have to go to any of these kids funerals that kept him from cancelling them. When it was over, though, he sat at his desk with a quill and parchment and began to write.
The house elves still loved him, even if so many had died in the battle, so it wasn't hard to convince them to bring the letter to Draco with his breakfast on Friday. It was only Tuesday, though, so he sat for three days in agony from waiting.
Then Friday came and the agony was different. He couldn't go and find Draco to see if he had read the letter. He had promised himself that if Draco did nothing with it, that was it. Harry would accept defeat and move on. Maybe in a few years they could be friends again, but he wouldn't bet on anything at this point.
Saturday was a Hogsmeade day and he allowed himself to lay in bed feeling dejected until noon. He had memorized the letter. It ticked through his head as he watched the clock moving.
Draco,
Houses get old. Mortar cracks and bricks chip until they crumble away. If a family loves their house, though, they put more mortar in and replace the bricks with newer ones that don't break as easily.
Honestly, that was an awful analogy and I'm sorry for it, but I've already thrown away six pieces of parchment and I'm too lazy to find more.
No, not lazy.
The truth is, this has been sitting in me for too long and I'm sick of throwing things away because they aren't perfect.
Nothing is perfect. Not you, not me. Nothing.
Maybe you forgot who I am. Maybe you forgot that I'm selfish sometimes and I don't always think about the consequences. I say things out of anger, and do things. I almost always regret them after, but they still happen. You have the scars to prove it.
I'm not the Savior. I'm not the Golden Boy. I may have been the Boy Who Lived, but that wasn't through my doing. I'm not some perfect standard that you should be trying to live up to.
I forget to do my dishes and sometimes I laugh when I shouldn't because my emotions are apparently rubbish at defining important moments.
The point I'm trying to get at here, in a roundabout, scared kind of way, is that I don't think I'd break you. I think you're too strong for that. You took the desolation that Voldemort left you with and you built yourself into someone else.
Even if I say something or do something that hurts you, you'd survive. No, you'd live. There's a difference and we both know it.
Trust me enough to only ever chip your bricks, never make them into powder. Trust me to add mortar anywhere it's going thin. Trust me.
There's really nothing more to say but I want to keep writing. I want to tell you everything that's going through my head because I think you'll never give me a chance to say it in person. I want to tell you that I figured out the meaning of life in the tenseness of your shoulder the day you walked out of my room. I figured out that magic exists because your eyes are grey and your mouth is sculpted, even in a sneer. I learned that you're in my skin like a rash that tickles instead of burns, except when you're mad, then it's like acid in my pores. I want to tell you everything I've figured out because you're in my dreams, but I won't. Not here. I can't put the words down knowing you could just throw this away and they're personal.
But that's the point, isn't it?
You're afraid I could break you.
But if you know that I think the world was made as a backdrop for you, you could break me. If you knew that I've wondered what you taste like and what your fingers in my hair would feel like, you could shatter me.
We're all breakable. You just have to find someone who wouldn't break you on purpose.
Harry
A part of him wondered where his eloquence had come from, because it had certainly never been evident when he was a student. But maybe this was more important than OWLS and NEWTS had ever been when Voldemort hung over everything he did.
He was sick of wondering where his feelings had come from. Harry just wanted to let it be. It would have been easier if the feelings were happy, but he was Harry Potter and he should have stopped expecting things to be easy for him fourteen years ago, when he had first realized he'd have to get past Fluffy to get the Sorcerer's Stone.
When he finally dragged himself out of bed to eat something, his tray arrived with a note. It was much smaller than his had been, but that could be good or bad. He was filled with trepidation, but read it anyway.
Harry,
A house doesn't know what type of family is moving in. It could be a caring one, but it could be a cruel one.
How could I break you? I'm not what is holding you together.
Draco
His response was was written with a piece of toast hanging out of his mouth the whole time.
No, you aren't holding me together. But I never had to rebuild myself because there was always someone to do it for me.
Do you think I'd be like a cruel family?
H
They passed the notes back and forth, eventually resorting to owls when the house elves started to get nosy.
You don't understand, Harry!
Of course not. You used an analogy that led me to talking about houses.
What if I could love you and you could be happy with me but you're too scared? Is it just because it's me, or would anyone scare you?
You.
Harry got a little morose after that, and didn't reply for a while. He wouldn't have responded if he hadn't noticed the glances Draco sent him in the hallways. It took two weeks of the looks before he realized he had almost done exactly what Draco was afraid of. He was going to break him because he gave up. So he stayed up all night writing a letter that turned out depressingly short. But he sent it before his first class.
You're scared of me. I know it. I don't know how to make it stop. I don't know how to make it go away. And it scares me because that's how I've felt for years now. I don't know anything. I'm fumbling around here looking for something to prove that I wouldn't break you when I can't ignore the possibility that I could. So here's the way to break me.
Kiss me.
Let down your guard for one bloody second.
Let me breathe in the way you say my name.
Let me touch the way happiness makes your body relax and how stress tenses your muscles.
I've never had you and you still haunt my dreams. I wake up feeling cold because I was expecting you next to me, but I've never woken up with you. I shake when I remember almost kissing you. I feel like dying when I remember you walking out and me not proving then and there that I wouldn't break you.
Because I've fallen in love with the way that you curl your letters even when you're mad. With the way that you smile with your eyes before it meets your lips. The way that your fingers always know what they're doing, even when it's clear that you don't.
Three days he waited for a response, and they all felt like being punched in the stomach.
It was the end of term. The students had left the day before, and all the teachers were gathering their things to follow them tomorrow.
Harry was wondering if there was a way to make all of it go away over the summer or if he'd have to find a new job. Ironic that he had quit his first career – the one he'd dreamed about for years – when he realized he wasn't in love with his wife. The second one – the one that hadn't crossed his mind until it was offered but had grown to love more than he could really stand – could end because of a failed relationship that never really started.
He was sitting on his bed, wondering what stuff he should bring. If he decided to quit, it would make more sense to pack everything. But if he decided to stay, he didn't want to have to move it all back at the beginning of term. He was staring at his trunk, silently daring it to voice an opinion when his door opened.
Draco looked at him, one eyebrow raised, for longer than Harry was really comfortable with. It was odd, but he also didn't want it to stop. At least he was looking and admitting his existence.
It was too much in the end. He pulled away and started throwing things in his trunk, not knowing or caring what he dropped in even when something broke with a crack.
He had almost convinced himself that he didn't care that Draco was still there when his hands met flesh instead of more books. He looked and followed and saw Draco there. He looked scared but defiant.
When Draco kissed him, the candles went up in flames. They were a forest fire, hot and bright and more immense than he could fathom.