III.
The weeks that follow find them spending increasingly less time together, and while Draco's always tended toward taciturn, there's an edge to his silences now that there wasn't before. The worst is that he won't look at Harry on those ever more rare occasions when they're in bed, when he's rutting hard against him, his face turned decisively away, the silver ring on his thin hand scraping and hurting them both where he has their cocks pressed together in a determined fist, sweat matting the platinum hair to his forehead. Harry might have been able to bear all of these, for as long as Draco needed, or even forever if need be, but. There's no arm around him anymore, in the middle of the night; no languid, beautiful roll of long limbs and the contented sigh, every time, from the lithe sleeper as he settles against Harry, unconsciously nuzzling his hair and neck. Harry's chest squeezes remembering that feeling, that sound, that Draco, and he's so lost in it that he fails to hear Flitwick, patiently pressing him for the second time about some particular of the Aguamenti. Half-heartedly, Harry lifts his wand and goes through the first motions, while his mind remains far away, still churning with despair. He can hardly believe it's only been a handful of months between when they began and where they are now– close, all too close, Harry fears, to ending. He suddenly feels like he's lived a whole exhausting lifetime in just one semester. And he knows Draco has, too.
With late April sending the heady scent of Asphodel blooms wafting through the sidelights of the warm and sunny charms classroom, it should be difficult to feel the chilly, remembered breeze of February on flushed skin, but it isn't, and in an eyeblink he's back there, seeing himself gasping like a stricken man when the skilled hand grips him through his trousers and he comes all over Draco's slim fingers even before he has him all the way out of his pants, then nearly fainting as he watches the pointed pink tongue drag leisurely along the pearly mess with a hum of pleasure.
If someone had told him that what had begun at Slughorn's Christmas party would eventually land them there, in that sticky, perfect, dizzying glory, he'd have been convinced that said speaker was under the influence of a Confundus charm.
lll
Luna's tugging at his sheened black formal jacket, whispering, but he hardly hears, watching intently as Argus grips a grimacing Draco in his hand. In the red glow of the lamps, he looks– wan, and Harry realizes that he's been looking that way for some time. Tired. He's angry, yes; twisting energetically, yes. But beneath that, there's a deep fatigue. It's the easy work of a moment to make an excuse and follow the flaring swirl of Snape's robe as they depart, and Harry assumes he's following them to spy, to discover what new treachery Malfoy's up to. He's sure it's nothing to do with that feeling that's been slowly stoking in his stomach recently, some kind of– hunger– whenever he thinks about the surly blonde. He's almost sure.
It's only snatches of sentences he catches, standing this far back, but the bits and pieces are enough to confirm his suspicions, and he's angry, as angry as Draco, who's just stormed away from Snape, and Harry catches up to him so quickly that he hasn't time to think what he's going to say. As they turn into a dim corridor, he halts him with the only word that comes to mind.
"Malfoy!"
The rest is blurred in a white haze of anger, as Harry pounces, verbally, and very nearly physically, on the shadowy figure, and he's entirely unprepared for both the softness that appears on Malfoy's face and the reply he delivers in the small slice of quiet when Harry finally stops yelling in order to take a breath. "You don't understand. I'm not going to– Yes, I've got a plan, but it's not. It's not what you think. I can't tell you more, now. But I swear. It's not what it seems. I–" His gesturing hand falls back to his side with an air of hopelessness, and he doesn't offer any other words.
Even if it had been from someone Harry trusted, this flimsy explanation would be wildly insufficient, but, inexplicably, Harry believes him. Something about his face, maybe, or the way he's breathing. Harry doesn't know, will never know, why something in his ribcage suddenly shifts, expands, and he trusts that there's truth behind the cryptic response, despite the fact that it's as thin and full of holes as lacework. For weeks, rumors have sailed through the halls: Draco Malfoy is now a deatheater. He's taken the dark mark. It could be true, Harry thinks as he leans forward; as he begins to extend his hand. But even if it is, there's more going on here than the simple "Malfoy is evil" narrative favored by every gossip within and without the castle walls, so he doesn't stop. He doesn't know what, exactly, he's offering by his extended hand, but he hopes the long nemesis he's suddenly seeing in a new light will accept it. With a catch in his throat, he suddenly remembers with regret his own rejection of Draco's small hand so many years ago. The holiday candles in the hallway flicker, and Harry doesn't see the lifting, but he hears the slight rustle of cloth a second before the meeting hand is there, closing warmly on his. And then just as quickly it's gone, and Draco's disappearing into the darkness.
It's a solid month before Harry works up the nerve to try to approach him, and then another week before he actually does it. Ironically, given how often he'd shadowed the Slytherin, it's wholly accidental - he's on his way to talk with Ron when he happens to see a flash of dress shirt flit round a corner like a skittering white bat, and somehow he knows it's Draco, takes a few quick strides after him before he's halted by the noise.
He'd have been prepared for anything else, really, from the treacherous to the sublime, but this– He thinks for a moment he must have it wrong - either that sound isn't what he thinks it is, or that wasn't in fact Malfoy darting into Myrtle's bathroom. Except that it is, and it was, and the sound slices through Harry as viciously as a Sectumsempra. He feels instinctively alarmed, and takes one quiet step forward on the marble floor, but guilt stills him. It seems so private, this choked, unbearable sobbing, and while there was the hesitant connection between the two of them in the holiday-glowed corridor, they'd hardly spoken in the interim, despite the fact that Harry's thought of little else every day, every hour, since. Conflicted, he finally turns away, his heart seized with ache. He'll find Draco tomorrow, devise some ruse to start a conversation, help him, if he can; simply listen sympathetically if he can't.
It proves an unnecessary plan. The students are convened to special emergency assembly the next morning, even before first classes, and when Harry walks in a minute or two tardy, the first thing he sees is Draco, looking much smaller than his appreciable height, his eyes casting nervously down, then up as he stands quietly beside Dumbledore in front of the entire company of Hogwarts. Harry's heart lurches in his chest as he slides into an end seat, and he fears the worst, but Albus doesn't look angry, or grave. He looks, in fact, quite pleased, and as he quiets the murmuring mass of students and begins to explain, it's quickly clear why: Draco Malfoy has defied his father and come to Dumbledore to, as it were, defect to the side of good.
Dumbledore's explanatory oration is thorough, but Harry had stopped listening after the first minute. He's heard all he needed to hear. He'd been there last night, watched silently what he's now discovering was the moment a young man, pressed into terrifying circumstances, was wrestling with a decision the enormity of which Harry could only imagine. Against the low-pitched, clearly scandalized murmur of the students, Harry hears the esteemed headmaster raising his voice in emphasis on phrases like "community" "welcome" "one of us", but what he sees is quite the opposite of those words: A boy thrust into a stark and terrible kind of solitude.
As he watches Draco try and fail to find any comfortable place to rest his gaze, Harry realizes that the former pride of the Malfoy line now has no one. No parents: He's betrayed his father, been disowned, losing Narcissa too, who'd surprised him by joining Lucius in shunning him. And no friends under this roof, where he'll be damned on both sides: Slytherins will revile him as weak, and the others as proven evil once only suspected. Standing behind Dumbledore, framed in the pallid light of February trickling in through the great hall's tall windows, he looks– He looks exactly what he is now: Completely alone in the world. No companions, a terrible enemy thirsty for revenge, and carrying a weight none of his peers could possibly understand. Or rather, none but one.
Harry can feel it from all the way back in the last row of benches, that weight, and he's shocked to find that it's not merely empathy that he's suddenly feeling. Harry realizes with a start that he wants to help Draco carry that weight. Wants to help rid him of it. Wants to– already does,
love him.
lll
It was ingrained habit by then, shadowing the willowy figure, and Harry makes an easy transition from doing so out of suspicion to doing so for– what? Protection? He's not certain what he'd call it, but he is sure that Draco's an outcast now, and in need of an ally. As they filtered out of the great hall that morning, he hadn't heard a single kind word among the buzzing students, only cruelties, smug "I told you so"s, and self-righteous condemnations.
Following unseen in Draco's path over the next few days, Harry hears them in the halls, mocking him - initially quietly, cautiously. Then openly, without hesitation. Gleefully. Draco can't strike back now; he has to prove he's not the monster he's been literally and figuratively branded to be, and Harry winces the first time he sees Draco's knuckles, painfully white, the bone making the skin so tight it glistens as he shoves his clenched fists into the pockets of his robe and walks resignedly on as the taunts hit him like small stones. Traitor. Death Eater.
Voldemort's whore.
Harry had waited until Draco's tension-gripped back disappeared around the corner before striding up to the Ravenclaw fifth year who stood laughing with the echo of that last slur in his mouth. He didn't need to grab his shirtfront in threat, didn't need to touch him at all; Harry's eyes, flashing violently, were more than enough assurance that he meant exactly what he said:
If you ever speak a word - even a single word - about him again,
I will make you wish you had never been born.
It's still bristling with that exchange that Harry bursts through the door of the Room of Requirement where Draco's quietly dismantling the Vanishing Cabinet, alone, as he'd requested of Dumbledore, who had offered assistance; suggested, even, that someone else do it, that Draco start putting this behind him and moving forward. "That you forgive yourself," the silent additive clause in the kindly headmaster's mind as he'd watched the young man, bowed at the shoulders, exit quietly from his office. Draco turns at the intrusion, and Harry stops a moment and takes him in: There's a bit of cobweb on his trousers, and dust motes are picking up flecks of light in the white-gold hair. He's clearly surprised by the sound of the door, but he doesn't blink or speak, just looks steadily at Harry, the mildly questioning expression on his face transforming into a very kind different sort as he fully registers the one on Harry's.
He should be startled when he catches the glimpse of it after, as he's folded in Draco's arms where they're slumped against an inverted couch, cushioned on Harry's hastily yanked off robe, the blonde lashes laying peacefully closed, the face that frames them looking rested, instead of, as usual, tired. The tiny thread of cool winter air slipping in from a neglected window curls around them like ribbon, and Harry smiles contentedly as he glances down to where their hands rest lazily entwined on his thigh. For a split second, he thinks the black fleck floating above the inside of Draco's wrist is a smudge, dirt that had dared to stick to pureblood skin as he'd gone about his dusty task. Only for a split second, and then he knows.
He should, in fact, be not merely startled, but horrified; it's the brand of the greatest evil the world has ever known, of the monster who murdered his parents. But he's not. It's just part of Draco - Draco who is a lot of things, but simple not being one of them. He's complicated and he's contradictory, and the green-black mark is just part of that, and while Harry knows the others see it as a label of crime, forever indelible proof of his complicity, he sees the opposite in it: a badge of honor. Forever indelible proof that Draco had the courage to defy not only his father, but Voldemort; a visible reminder that he had the strength of character to make the right choice after making the wrong one. His classmates regard the whispered-about stain as physical proof of their long-held suspicion that beneath the pretty exterior beats an ugly heart, but Harry knows the truth: His beauty's not just a mask. Draco Malfoy is as beautiful inside as he is out. It's that thought that has him softly, disastrously, reaching toward cashmere.
lll
He can't stop seeing Draco's face at that awful moment, even as the good-natured Hufflepuff next to him taps Harry's arm in confusion, gesturing with his eyes that Charms is over and the room emptied.
Nodding and making the pretense of needing to stay behind to gather up his strewn quills and books, Harry sends him on his way, hearing in the sound of the retreating footfalls the painful echo of Draco striding away from his reaching hand, left hovering in the dusty air. Still remembering the lush caress of the fabric against his bare back in the blissful last seconds before he made the blunder of trying to touch the inky brand, Harry realizes suddenly and with a quiet horror that it's not just the others who see it as not merely infamy, but as disgusting – In the snarl and the tearing away, Harry only noticed the anger, but the rest was just as clear and alive on the boy's face: Shame.
Then, they'd tremulously rebuilt the fragile bridge between them, but this time–
Draco's steadily slipping away, into the arms of demons Harry doesn't know how to exorcise, and thanks to Harry's gaff the space between them is wider than it's ever been. It's true, he doesn't know the first thing about being marked the way Draco is. He can't even imagine it really, and he kicks himself for the stupidity, the naiveté, of his bumbled comparison. He doesn't know how to take those words back, ease the thorn of them out of the wound. What he does know is that what it's done to Draco is a stain on their relationship, palpable even though hidden, just like the mark itself.
It's going to get between them, keep them at a distance, and, if the recent trend was any indication, drive them apart for good. Harry knows he has to do something. The trouble is, he hasn't even the vaguest idea what.