It's a known fact across Hogwarts that Ron Weasley wasn't talking to Neville Longbottom at the moment. Not ever since Longbottom's name shot out of the Goblet of Fire. But seeing Weasley humiliate Longbottom in front of what seemed like the entire school was a whole different story.
Who knew that Weasley, of all people, would have the guts to humiliate his supposed 'best friend'? Harry could only blink and stare at the red faced boy-who-lived until Draco grabbed his elbow and dragged him off. Harry heard Longbottom sigh, a sigh that sounded as if it came from somewhere deeper than his lungs.
Harry didn't feel bad for him, not in the least. As a matter of fact, Harry and Draco stayed up all night last night creating badges that read about Cedric Diggory being the true Hogwarts Champion, and if you pressed the badge into your chest slightly, they change to read "Longbottom Stinks." It was Draco's idea, Harry just helped in the making of them. But it's true, apparently in more than half of the schools opinion, because many of the students were wearing the badges now.
Cedric Diggory is the true Hogwarts Champion for the Triwizard Tournament, not Longbottom.
"Tense, Longbottom?" called Harry, a smirk on his face as Longbottom rushed by. His feet were fast and his shoulders were hunched, his entire body stiff. Yeah, he was tense.
Draco jumped out of the tree Harry was standing in front of with a few other friends. He took a step, and slipped between Lucifer and Harry.
Longbottom stopped and turned abruptly, glaring daggers at them.
"You see," Harry continued when he didn't get an answer, and he took a couple slow steps closer, his smirk growing, "Malfoy and I have a bet."
Theo and Blaise's attention were locked in a heated argument with each other before now. Their attention has averted to Harry, curious.
Draco smirked, "Potter here doesn't think you'll last ten minutes in this tournament." he drawled from behind Harry.
"He disagrees, of course." scoffed Harry, jabbing a thumb over his shoulder to gesture at Draco, "Malfoy doesn't think you'll last five."
Longbottom growled, a disturbing and odd sound vibrating from the back of his throat. Then, he turned on his heels, and strode away, not saying a word.
Lucifer couldn't help but grin at the way they got under Longbottom's skin like that. He doesn't think he'll ever forget that unfamiliar murderous look on Longbottom's face for that split second. He'll never be more mad than when Draco and Harry team up against him. They're in tune with each other, always knowing the others thoughts, somehow. Truly, a force to be reckoned with.
Harry wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and straightened his posture. he wanted more than anything to lean on Lucifer but he felt as though that'll show signs of weakness, and he isn't weak. Not even when he's hacking up his stomach because of his anxiety.
But Lucifer had his arm around his waist, so he leaned on him a bit while mindlessly vanishing the vomit behind the tree.
There's chatter and cheers emitting from the stadium that is the Quidditch pitch. Harry sighed and closed his eyes, resting his head on Lucifer's shoulder. He really doesn't want to go back in there, but his friends are all in there, expecting him to sit with them, and feel okay. He never feels okay in loud, large places.
Lucifer dropped his arm as Harry took his own weight again, and asked if he thought he would be okay to go back. Harry nodded, thinking that he's getting older, he should be able to pull his shit together.
They slowly made their way back toward the stadium in silence, but they stayed standing at one of the entrances, instead of climbing the bleachers to their spots with Draco, Blaise, Theo and Pansy. They watched the last champion, Fleur Delacour, enter the maze.
A couple of minutes after the silver-haired girl disappeared in the looming green walls, Draco silently joined them, and took refuge beside Harry.
"Feeling better?" he asked, not even glancing at Harry.
With a sigh, Harry said, "Much."
"Will it ever stop?"
"I can only hope, I guess."
Beside Harry, Lucifer sighed irritably and closed his eyes, pinching the bridge of his nose.
"What?" snapped Harry, turning his head fast to face Lucifer.
"There are pills to make it stop, both wizard and muggle." suggested Lucifer.
"I don't believe in medication." Harry stated, voice more confident than he suddenly felt.
"Why not?" asked Draco.
"It really only makes things worse." before they got a chance to question him any further, Harry turned and left. Lucifer and Draco both gaped at his retreating form for a moment before Draco shook himself and pulled Lucifer away. Lucifer hesitated to go with Draco for a brief moment, because he wanted to call after Harry, tell him to come back, to trust him, to talk to him.
But Draco tugged at him and said, "It's best if he has some time alone right now."
The truth is, Harry's mother has had an addiction to these muggle pills for a couple years. Since the year before Harry first started at Hogwarts, as a matter of fact. She has overdosed a few times, and he's come home during breaks to find that she was in the Hospital and it was just going to be him and his father for the time. It's been hard on him, and sometimes he wants to rip her throat out so she can't swallow the pills that are killing her anymore.
Her skin has gone from glowing healthy pale to ashen grey. Her bones protrude from her paper thin skin because the only thing she ever consumes are these tiny white pills. Harry and his father don't even know what they are or where she gets them. All they know is they're killing her, and she's threatened to kill them before at the suggestion of getting help or taking the pills away.
Harry sometimes wonders what could have driven the beautiful and bright Lily Potter to do something like that to herself, but when he thinks about everything she went through during the war all those years ago, he stops wondering. It's hard to live with memories like that. She probably just wanted some form of escape, and found it in the wrong place,
Harry decided he didn't want to be anywhere at the moment.
It's times like these he just wants to disappear.
Fleur Delacour and Viktor Krum had emerged from the Enchanted Maze already, surprisingly still sane. They're standing with their friends, and the crowd had only just quieted down from Viktor's return when Harry slipped into a spot beside Pansy Parkinson. She was sitting with a couple other girls in Slytherin in front of Theo, Lucifer, Draco and Blaise.
Lucifer beamed when Harry turned around to smile at the four of them. Absolutely beamed.
But then there was a crack that pierced the air and it quieted the crowd to a dead silence and Cedric Diggory stumbled out of the maze, his eyes haunted and face pale under the dirt and grime. In his arms was an unconscious Longbottom and everyone broke out into cheers and song and applause.
Until Fleur let out a blood curdling scream.
And Cedric dropped the limp body on the ground. He fell to his knees beside Neville, hyperventilating, and burying his face in his hands. Harry only vaguely registered Lucifer whispering, "Oh, Merlin, no." before everything sped ahead.
Draco's breath hitched and he lost his balance to a buckled knee. People started screaming and crying, and rushing off the bleachers to get a better look and the band stopped playing their instruments. Harry had to swallow his rising vomit before turning around to slip his hands under the arms of Draco, He hoisted him to his feet, grabbed his arm, and started down the bleachers.
Draco's grey eyes were red and dry, Harry noticed as he dragged the blonde out of the busy stadium. All he could think about was what possibly could be going through Draco's mind at this very moment.
The rolling hills covered in calming green, the forests' lining the horizon - standing tall against the cloudless sky, the cattle roaming free in the seemingly endless fields. It all rushed by in a blur as Draco and Harry sat across from each other in the otherwise empty compartment. Lucifer, Blaise, Theo and Pansy were in another compartment somewhere else on the train.
The reason why Draco and Harry were alone? Neither of them quite knew.
Was it uncomfortable? Neither could tell.
It was silent, with only the distant sound of clinking metal and the woman selling sweets asking with her wispy voice, "Anything from the trolly, dears?"
Harry and Draco knew she would be reaching their compartment soon, but neither wish to speak at the moment. They've come to a silence that they haven't experienced before. They don't know what it'll be like if it's broken, but it won't be the same. Not awkward, or stiff, or uncomfortable. Just different.
It won't be the silence that will breathe for you when you seem to forget how to drag the air into your lungs. It won't cry for you when you're at your weakest and you just need too, but you know it's a cowardly thing sometimes and you wish you just didn't forget how to cry. It won't speak the words you can't get out of your dry throat. It won't listen to you at 4 am when you don't know who else to go to or what else to do.
Harry knew he wanted to question Draco, but he couldn't think of the right questions.
She was at the compartment next to theirs now, asking "Anything from the trolly, dears?" And thankfully, they said yes, so that will occupy her for a moment. Harry can't help but wonder if she ever gets tired of saying that over and over. But it's hard to imagine her doing anything else.
And then she was sliding open their compartment door, with loud creaks from the slightly rusted metal and she was asking again if they would like "anything from the trolly, dears?"
Harry looked away from Draco, to smile at her and say, "No thank you," with a nod, and the only thought he had was, 'well, fuck.'
He wondered if it was to late to continue with the silence, but the door was sliding back in place and Harry was looking back at Draco, who's now staring back at him. His eyes watch the movement of his hand as Harry pushed his glasses back up his nose. Then Draco reached over and pulled them off his face, and Harry's world goes so blurry that it's almost like looking through frosted glass. He can't see Draco, but he heard him say, "I can fix your vision, you know." quietly.
"Can you?" asked Harry lightly, nonchalantly. He honestly knows how easy it is to fix his eye sight, but his father wouldn't have it. Says that the glasses are a Potter tradition, every Potter's been blind and they've all had matching glasses and they won't stop that anytime soon.
But cold wood was being pressed to the skin between his eyebrows, and Draco was mumbling an incoherent spell that Harry has never heard before and then he wasn't looking through frosted glass anymore. That wasn't the way he learnt to fix his eye sight.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust, but when they do, Harry looked at Draco. Really looked at Draco. They stared at each other for a moment, but Draco eventually averted his gaze to the glasses he was mindlessly playing with. He bends the bridge of them experimentally and looks back up at Harry, "May I?" he asks, holding up the glasses. Harry nodded once and grimaced at the sound it made when Draco broke them in half. It sounded like an era ending. (When he get's home, Harry will go to a muggle store and get a cheap pair of glasses with no prescription, and he'll wear them just for the familiar weight atop his nose.)
"Why is death such a hard thing for you?" Harry finally asked that question. The question that Draco didn't want to hear but knew was coming and knew he had to answer. The question Harry had wanted to ask for a long time, but didn't really want to know the answer too, because maybe it had a back story to it, like why he doesn't like medication.
Draco has been trying to answer this question himself since Jess Winkle died at the beginning of Third year and he was devastated for quite some time.
Although he doesn't have the answer yet, Draco does have a question that would stump them both, "Why shouldn't it be?"
"You hardly knew Jess and you despised Longbottom. So, why?" came his rushed reply, and Draco blinked at him owlishly.
Harry was right, but he was also so wrong. It matters not who died. What is such a hard thing for him to process is the fact that someone can have their life, soul, taken from them as easily as a candle being blown out. That energy can be pumped out of someone as slowly and painfully as a fatal wound bleeding out. And when it happens to someone he knows, it just makes it all the more real that death can happen to anyone at any time. It sickens him, sometimes, troubles him to great lengths.
He never fails to worry himself to the point of having nightmares of people he genuinely care about dying in the most gruesome of ways.
But Draco doesn't know how to put this into words, no matter how badly he wants to spill everything to Harry. So, he sucked in a deep breath, and held it for a moment while thinking, then exhaled slowly.
"Just, drop it, alright, Potter?"
