Marble

Draco forever stands on the edge of the forest. In the rain, in the sun, in the snow. Harry tries to save him, because in the end he just can't help himself. HPDM, Post-War

Chapter Two – Honest

Harry roused to a soft noise in the Common Room beyond his dormitory, since he had neglected to shut the door that would have otherwise muffled it. He felt the fleeting grip of sleep fade away much too quickly, and his back and head ache at the loss.

Easing his legs over the edge of the bed, he rubbed his eyes roughly with his fingertips, before groping blindly for his spectacles. The soft light glinting through the window told him it was still early, and the sun still rising, and he squinted at the dusky haze as it crept through the glass and across the worn wooden floorboards. Harry heaved a deep sigh.

Investigation into the noise revealed to him the sight of Hermione as he stumbled awkwardly down the last few steps of the stairs, ruffling his hair and yawning.

''Mione, it's like five in the morning.' Hermione started slightly at the sound of his voice, twirling her wand over the fireplace to fan the flame and spinning round to greet him.

'I know, sorry. I didn't mean to wake you.'

'No, that's fine. Just, why are you here at five in the morning?' Harry shuffled over, catching his bare toes on the edges of the many rugs that decorated the floor. 'Is everything okay?'

'Yes, of course. Sorry,' she apologised again, looking back into the fire. 'Well, as okay as it can be. I just wanted to read up here instead of the library, since it's so cold down there...'

'What was wrong with home?' His question caused her to look up sharply, and Harry tried to suggest with his face that he wasn't being accusing or angry. 'Is everything...'

'They still don't remember me very well,' she sighed, shoulders drooping as she looked down. 'Most of the time it's fine, but every now and then..' Hermione ran a hand through her hair. 'My mum looks away sometimes, and when she looks back it's like she's never seen me before.' One of the books she'd stacked on a table fell over with a thud, and they both glanced at it. 'I would go to Ron's, but...'

'No, I know,' Harry soothed, moving over to wrap his arms loosely around her, hearing her sigh into his shoulder. 'I'm happy to see you. I just don't want you to kill yourself with working,' he smiled sadly into her hair.

'I suppose we both just want to do something.'

'Hello again.'

Harry zipped up his jacket as the breeze carried across a cold flash from the lake surface, and stared at Malfoy's alabaster brogues.

'I slept a little last night, but not much,' he muttered to the ground, moving his hands to keep them warm in his pockets. 'Hermione woke me up at dawn. By accident, I mean – she's not sleeping either, I think, and she's pretty much obsessed with this warding thing. I'm worried about her.'

He looked back at the castle, and heard the slightest rustles of activity despite the emptiness and solitude of the grounds; he could see only him and Malfoy. He could always see Malfoy.

''Ron's, well... You don't care.' Harry looked the statue in the eye then, and frowned. 'You don't care about Hermione either. Didn't – didn't care.' He was pretending Malfoy was something he wasn't, a friend or a sympathetic ear. Malfoy hated his friends; he'd laugh at their troubles. They seemed nothing, next to death.

'You're right. At least they're not gone, I guess. Like you are, which is why talking to you is stupid,' he admonished himself. 'Maybe I'm making the best of a captive audience. You wouldn't have stood there five seconds if you were alive,' Harry chuckled humourlessly.

A large rook flew low overhead, and swooped to perch quizzically on a nearby branch. Harry and it observed each other for a moment. 'Minerva wants me to get back to her soon – so she knows whether to look for someone else.'

The rook cawed harshly in response, and hopped about the tree, giving Harry and his unusual companion a suspicious glance every now and then. Harry felt the irritated need to scare it off. 'I kind of wish I could ask your advice. I haven't talked to Hermione about it.'

The rook flew noisily away. Good riddance, Harry thought.

'I'm going to go see Teddy, tomorrow,' he smiled at the landscape. 'I just – I want him to feel like he has a family, you know. And not a crap one, like mine,' he added. 'But, I know you can't replace parents who love you. Like you have. Had.'

Harry turned and walked back to the castle.

'We've never really been at Hogwarts during summer before. Is it nice on the grounds, this time of year?'

'Not really, no.'

'I don't really want you to be here, when school starts again. I can just see the kids, you know, hanging scarves on you, trying to push you over...' Harry sighed. 'You don't deserve that.'

He scuffed his old, wrecked trainers on the new, fresh grass around Malfoy's feet. 'Minerva says you can't be moved but I think we should try again. I don't know, maybe put you somewhere quiet in the castle, like Dumbledore did with the mirror of Erised. Erm, that's this big old mirror that showed you what you wanted most in the world.'

Harry didn't need to explain that, since Malfoy wasn't really there and he himself knew already. So why did he? 'Ron saw himself as Head Boy, and Quidditch captain and everything. I saw my parents. Dumbledore said he saw a new pair of socks, but I'm pretty certain that wasn't true.'

But then again, the old man had been a bit strange. 'I've got no idea what you would have seen. We didn't really know each other at all, did we?'

The sun began to sink before the horizon, painting Malfoy in colours of deep warmth and light. 'We only saw the bad sides. I saw how you had to try to kill him. I... I cast that spell on you.'

Harry breathed deeply, eyes on the sunset. 'I'm sorry – really, really sorry for that. I didn't know what it would do. I found it in an old potion's textbook, that turned out to be Snape's, in the end.'

Would he be able to pour out his soul to a statue, if that statue had been of Snape? Probably not. 'You went through a lot. I didn't help much.'

'Hermione's worked out this diagnostic spell with Flitwick – she says she can use it to find the damage in the castle wards,' Harry's tone was chatty as he shuffled to and fro. Hermione had burst into the dormitory that morning, hair flying and a genuine, relieved smile on her face. Picturing it in his head made him smile. 'Then I can finally do something useful by helping fix them. They stopped letting me move the stonework around when I ended up crushed under an archway,' he shook his head at himself as the smile turned sour.

'Neville got caught too, but he only broke his leg.' Harry hadn't been so lucky. Pomfrey had nearly howled with shock and concern when they'd levitated him into the infirmary. 'We both fixed up quickly, but my ribs still ache a little every now and then.'

The smile disappeared altogether. 'I need to decide if I'm staying here, soon. I'd have to work on lesson plans, and homework...' And he'd probably still make a terrible teacher. It wasn't really fair, to inflict him on other students. He'd be mad to do it. 'If I say no, then you might get lonely.' Harry could almost hear the harsh laugh he'd get in response to that. Malfoy would probably rather jump into a crate of blast-ended skrewts before requesting Harry for company.

'Maybe if you were here, you could teach too. Slughorn wants to retire again at the end of the year. With the two of us, Gryffindor would have no chance at the house cup – I'd give them points, and you'd take them away again.'

Harry smiled at the image of Malfoy in professor's robes. 'You'd be like the next Snape, but with better hair.' His eye caught Malfoy's frightened face again, and the smile vanished.

Harry had just shuffled into the cold protection of the castle walls when a hand on his shoulder made him jump. 'Hi, Harry.'

'Oh, yeah, hi.'

'Is that who I think it is?'

Harry nodded slowly, eyes fixed on the rough stone floor. 'Malfoy.'

'Oh, Harry. I'm sorry.'

'I told Minerva I'd do it,' he said to Malfoy's sharp, jutting elbow, as the chatter and fluster of wildlife in the forest grew quieter and the sun dissolved into the grey blue of the lake. 'She asked me again at breakfast. And – I saw you, and I said yes.

'I don't know why – I could really use help right now. It wouldn't be fair to ask Hermione so I won't. I'd be a shit teacher if she had to hold my hand the whole time.'

Harry could see a flicker of white, that pearly opalescent Malfoy white, swimming around the edge of his watery eyes. If he squinted maybe he could pretend to himself he was alive again, sneering and shaking his head.

'If we'd been friends, I'd ask you. I wish we'd been friends. When we were eleven - everything was so black and white. If you hadn't been so bloody snobby about Hagrid, maybe – maybe I'd have been Slytherin, too.'

Harry walked in a tight circle, and paused to watch the light flow over the horizon, and splash up the sides of the surrounding mountainous landscape. 'I'd ask you, and you'd be honest.'

Harry could hear it, and his chest hurt. Of course you'd be a shit teacher, Potter.

'I'll be an awful teacher,' Harry agreed. 'But I can't just leave you here alone.'

'Working on your lesson plans?' Hermione joined him in the den-like alcove of books Harry had created in the library.

'I was – I guess I got a bit distracted. Some lessons are just as boring the second time around,' Harry smiled at her, flicking aimlessly through his book as she re-arranged the table and sat down next to him, peering over his shoulder.

'What did you get distracted by?' She asked, as she picked up one of his discarded textbooks and examined the cover.

'Levitating charms. Um, powerful ones.' Hermione looked at him in silence for a moment. 'Minerva told me they'd tried to move him.'

Hermione studied his eyes, brow furrowed. 'Why is it so important to you?'

Harry sighed. 'I really don't know.'

'I'm terrified by the idea of school starting,' Harry mumbled to Malfoy's static jacket. 'I've never been more scared by kids. I just know I'm going to fuck this up. You'd probably agree.'

Harry had less than a week until the first of September came, and he was sat right up at that table. Looking at all those faces. He felt sick just thinking about it.

'I've got everything sorted, at least. Mrs Tonks knew where Remus had left his old stuff, so that was pretty useful. I just hope one of them just doesn't end up injured or something... I guess you'd know about that.

'Hagrid did say you shouldn't insult Hippogriffs,' Harry admonished the statue, before catching himself and blushing at the stupidity of it. 'Not that that matters. I'm sorry to tell you Buckbeak got away in the end. I might have had something to do with it.' He coughed awkwardly.

'If you were here, I'd ask how bad that scarred,' Harry looked into the woods, and imagined Buckbeak's powerful front legs, claws scraping across the exposed roots of the trees. 'Hagrid – he really tried, but... some of his ideas weren't the safest.'

The light had all but disappeared, now, and the evening air took a dip in temperature, influencing Harry to stuff his hands in his jeans pockets for warmth. His thumb caught in a hole, and he thought about the stuffy, dark robes he'd gone to Diagon Alley with Mr Weasley to buy. He'd seen the man look sadly at a bright set of business robes, and he knew they were both thinking of Fred.

'I researched moving you. I didn't find much, but – there must be something. It's stupid – I just, I don't think I could stand seeing you out here in the snow. I know you wouldn't be able to feel it or anything – look, I know you're not here. That that's not really you. It's just.. It's not right.'

'Hermione – you'd never believe – she gave me a bloody leaflet about survivors' guilt. A fucking leaflet. Did you know the Ministry did leaflets? I didn't,' Harry paced to and fro, glancing up every now and then to look everywhere but Malfoy's face. 'She just slides it over to me and says 'you don't have to spend every night out there, Harry'.' He tried to mimic her voice, but his voice cracked, still sore from crying. His eyes flicked, looking everywhere, seeing that fucking light shining across Malfoy's fucking awful white terrified face.

'I do know that – I know this is weird! It's not like I don't see you and wonder what I'm doing. She tried to make me feel guilty about it – all, 'what if the children see you'! She just doesn't...'

Harry stomped away, jerking undecided mid stride and striding over to the edge of the forest. He eyed a tree, seething. Then he punched it.

Hand dripping, droplets of blood dancing down his fingers to soundlessly fall free from the tips, Harry returned to his haunting statue, and restrained himself from punching it, too.

'I – it's a fucking ridiculous name. 'Survivors' guilt' – should I... should I not feel guilty? You didn't deserve this any more than the rest of us – maybe if I'd just seen you, helped you... Malfoy, it's fucking impossible not to feel guilty when I can see you from my bloody window!'

Harry's hand jarred in sharp pain, and he breathed in short huffs through his teeth, clenching his uninjured hand into a fist. 'And you just stand there, I can even see you in the pitch black, with all this fucking white marble – I don't know how she expects me to just pretend you're not there!'

Harry jerked his head down, and stared at the rhythmic drip drip drip of his blood pattering on the dry ground. He saw blood in his nightmares – dreamed about Remus and Fred, and George's ear slashed away. He never saw blood when he dreamed about Malfoy; never any colour, always just white.

Harry lifted his hand, considered the skin raggedly split across his knuckles, and the thin lines of red flowing down and joining on his fingers. He reached out, and painted Malfoy's cheek in red.

...punching a fucking tree, you ridiculous bastard...

Harry threw himself back violently, tripping over his own feet and landing with a painful thud in the dirt. He caught himself on his bloodied hand, but was too shocked to really register the pain.

Malfoy's voice.

In his head.

Harry's hands scrabbled mindlessly at his sides, flowing blood and dust caking his hand in dirt as he stared at Malfoy's statue. His hip and ribs sang loudly with pain. Was that...?

'I'm going mad.' Harry told it. 'I've gone mad.'

He slowly, clumsily, stood up. 'Completely mad.' He reached out, and with the slightest, lightest of pressures, touched his fingertips to Malfoy's face again, over the smears of his own blood.

… that really have been – Potter?

'Malfoy?'

Potter!