Title: Don't Speak
Author: mintapotter
A/N: Big thank you to Vampire Louis, whose reviews genuienly make me smile and help me with my terrible spelling!
Last order of business, the lyrics for the title are from Sia's 'Butterflies'.
Enjoy!
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Chapter 29 - We've Been to the Top We've Been to the Bottom,
We've known everything, and forgotten,
You've kicked me around, you've wrapped me in cotton
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He pulled closer, resting finally with his front completely along my back, warm and comforting and close in a way I never thought he could manage in all his craziness. He chuckled low at my response.
"I look forward to it, then."
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My mind is an awful blur, and all the time that I've spent outside here, under my little tree has hardly done anything to clear it all up.
I just want things simple and orderly like before. I want to hate Draco and I want to keep him mine, and I want the little reprieves inbetween the hate to just spend some time together. I still want the quiet, the peace. I want peace.
It seemed however that no amount of time spent under the tree brooding would help my muddled mind.
As fate would have it, being outside for all those hours would be both a saving grace and damnation.
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I'm not sure how much time exactly had passed since I left the Infirmary this morning, or since Ron visited with his own little bombshell. What I am sure of is that the shadows on the lawn have shrunk and grown, and the students milling about their pathetic lives have come and gone in waves with each passing class.
None of them do anything more than hazard a glance in my direction when they pass by, and it's a safe choice that none of them chose to spoke to me.
I'm in the mood to do just about anything right now, and I want the peace and the quiet soon.
My mind is in no condition to love somebody. I can barely take care of myself properly.
And that was a central truth that I couldn't deny; I hadn't eaten breakfast today, and I chose to skip lunch thinking that Draco was probably doing the same thing. It seemed only fair that if he had to suffer alone, that I should too.
Since when does fair or right come into the equation?
And with that little thought popping into my head I saw a flash of something, or a someone in a tower window. That was not unusual in itself. Students passing by windows during class had been snatching my attentions all morning.
It was the fact that this window was in the Infirmary, and it was the window that Draco had been staring out of since the moment I had found him.
It was the fact that the blonde was not only admiring the view, but he was stepping through the open frame and swinging his legs in the open air, his knees far over the edge.
FUCK! Why me, why ALWAYS bloody me?
"DRACO! DRACO!"
Screaming would do nothing at this point, so I started to run. My stomach churned like acid was peeling its way through the lining and up my throat. I couldn't breathe, I was drowning.
I didn't care.
I wanted to run twice as fast, to get into the school and fly up the stairs and burst into his room just in time to grab his hand, just in time to pull him back over the edge. I wanted to be where he was, holding him back.
"DRACO, STOP!"
Breathing hurt; my lungs burned. Every muscle was pumping working, filling with acid and burning. I couldn't remember ever running so fast in so short a time before, I couldn't remember ever having so much anxiety built up in so short a moment.
And Draco didn't care enough to heed my warnings. He pushed off the edge, and I wasn't quite at the school yet. I wasn't even close enough to the wall to break his fall with my body and die with him.
Wait. I'm not there yet to catch you yet.
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Jump.
I had to close my eyes to the world as I pushed off the ledge, because seeing things spinning by so fast would be too much. I'd scream for fear, and there was nothing I could do to prevent that screaming but to close my eyes.
Fall.
Nothing made adrenaline rush like this. No other experience, save the best moment in sex, could ever send shivers up my spine like this feeling. This absolute, pure, rush.
Someone was screaming below me, but given another split second and I'd hit the ground-
No. Harry was supposed to save me. Where's Harry? I wasn't supposed to fall. This isn't happening.
I opened my eyes, and watched the packed dirt and scratched grass reach up to greet me.
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I'm not close enough to save him. I don't want him to die.
STOP.
My throat closed off the awful, screaming words when I thought the word stop. My mind halted thinking for a moment, and it felt instead.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but a feeling was worth a million.
Is it enough?
I didn't hear the thump of a dead weight hitting the earth. I didn't hear moans of pain, or a scream from Draco's lips. I realized that all this time, all in this moment I had closed my eyes and I had only to open them to see what would be before me.
Draco.
But not a Draco broken, this was a Draco halted from making the biggest mistake of his life. He remained suspended only inches from the earth, where magic and pure will had stopped him. I inhaled a single, deep breath and he fell the last few inches, shakily pushing himself from the dirt and sitting against the stone wall behind him, thrown abruptly into the shadow of the castles walls.
I can't feel anymore. Not my body at least; I'm on my hands and knees, shaking. Everything is cold, I can't stop shivering. Why am I on my knees? All I need is for my mouth to form words, for my mind to think proper thoughts.
"Love, what the hell were you thinking?" I hissed as I approached him, kneeling at his side and grasping his hand, which was colder than ice and shaking with tremors beneath the skin.
But alive.
"Since when am I 'love'?" he responded with a question, his head cocked hazily to the side
"Since a few inches separated you from your early grave." I replied, smoothing his windblown hair back from his face, only to reveal his thoroughly shocked eyes. "Actually, since I decided to stay 'till morning rather than leave at midnight." I whispered this and watched his slowed reaction to it, the widening of his eyes and the sorrowful smile on his face.
"Really? You stayed past the end of the dare, for me?" I nodded in response as he moved his head from under my touch and nestled instead on my shoulder. "I should have never doubted that you'd catch me."
"What?"
He sighed and trembled at my tone, before whispering slowly back. "I only jumped because I knew that you'd catch me. I knew-"
I pushed away from him and held him back from me a distance at his shoulders. "You jumped because you knew that I'd catch you? I could have been looking the other direction, or-"
"But you weren't." he replied dreamily, eyes still in the odd shocked state they had adopted right after his landing. "And that's what counts, that I know that you'll always be around-"
I pulled my right hand back and slapped quite viscously at his face, my own palm and fingers ringing from the impact. He rolled with the hit, twisted back to me slowly with a much more down to earth look in his eyes, and his hands cradling his reddened cheek.
Sometimes the old way is the best way.
"You cannot be so stupid as to think that I'll always be there to save you from your own messed up plans, because I won't. I may love you and you may feel the same for me, foolish as the thought may be, and that grants both of us some rights. Such as we trust each other to not purposefully throw ourselves into danger. Certaintly not willingly to death."
I pulled his hands away from his face at his wrists, to which he immediately flinched but I would not slap him again.
That was the shock he needed to get back to earth. This is the healing bit.
I kissed his cheek lightly, then his lips. No tongue, because this wasn't the place or time for that. This was my way of showing Draco that I wasn't changing everything I had been because my emotions had finally gotten the better of me. He was still all mine, and because of that nothing and nobody would ever hurt him.
Not even himself.
"Repeat after me. Word for word." Draco nodded, eyes trembling closed.
"You are mine." I whispered this slowly, watching Draco's shut lids flutter but not open as he silently mouthed the words after me.
"You are mine."
"And I am yours."
"And I am yours."
"Now look at me."
Draco reluctantly opened his eyes again, his irises still looking distant and his hands still barely shaking in my grasp. This was the fragile Draco that had to be taken care of. This was the broken-down side of him that even he managed to further hurt.
"You are worth much more than the fact that I happen to love you. You are a person unto yourself, and you don't need me. But for as long as we are together, like this, I won't let anyone hurt you, and you will not willingly hurt yourself. Understood?" A sharp shake of his head told me that 'yes', he was lucid enough to understand my words.
"Same applies to me. We can…bend the rules when it's just the two of us together, though."
He cracked a wry smile that crinkled his eyes and made a few tears drop, but they were old tears that didn't mean much anymore. He wasn't crying now; these were the vestiges of fear simply left behind in his eyes, and the drops had nowhere to fall but down his face. I wiped them away nonetheless, before standing up slowly and carrying Draco in my arms, his own wrapped around my neck. With eyes blissfully closed he leaned into my shoulder, silent.
Walking into Hogwarts had never felt so peaceful.
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The shakes were back, with full force. Harry remained silent on our private walk back up to the Infirmary, where I knew he'd make me stay for days on end. But every time his hands would shift to pull me closer to him I would shudder involuntarily. It was a shiver from my core on every step, and every jostle.
I suppose my body hadn't caught up with my brain on the fact that no, I hadn't died and no, I was not convulsing at the bottom on my drop.
Something jittery in me had awoken with the fall too; my eyes shut every time we passed by a classroom and the teacher abruptly barked something at a student, or when somebody dropped a book flat on the floors.
I think I see Harry's want for silence earlier this year. Silence is a cherishable thing, and I think my nerves are too frayed to deal with anything more than a whisper.
For a while.
Even Pomphrey didn't say a word when Harry walked back into the Infirmary with me still in his arms, and gestured with a tilt of his head to our old bedroom, kept separate from the main ward. She looked apprehensive at first, and then waved a hand at him to let himself in.
It's almost like this is home now.
It's sad to think how much of my time spent in this god-awful room was negative, and yet I think I missed it. It had become familiar because it had memories attached to it that Slytherin dormitories never managed to create. Every part of this room, every article of furniture and wall had a memory associated with it.
Not all good ones, I must admit, but memories none the less. And it led to this moment, this second right now where Harry is carrying me back from a fall rather than dropping me to one.
That's an improvement.
Harry was true to form and laid me carefully on my bed, pulling the covers up over my shaking shoulders and leaving me for a moment, only to return by pushing his bed up next to mine and fusing them using some transfiguration spell I didn't recognize.
I didn't care what the spell was however, it was the thought that counted.
We're together. Finally.
"Harry?" I whispered carefully as he slid a warm, steady arm over mine and hugged me closer to him.
"What is it?"
"Will you stay the night tonight? Please? For me?" It sounded like a beg because it was, and I didn't have it in me to care at the moment. I needed this and he was the only one who could give it to me.
"Of course." He whispered back, even his breath warm on my neck.
"You do realize that if we stay cooped up in here long enough I'll end up jumping you at an inappropriate time or place?"
I smiled and couldn't manage a laugh, but a smile was a good start. This one didn't even come with tears, thankfully.
"If you do I'll have to slap you for being so daft."
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He pulled closer, resting finally with his front completely along my back, warm and comforting and close in a way I never thought he could manage in all his craziness. He chuckled low at my response.
"I look forward to it, then."
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A/N: Hope you liked that! THANKS to: MimiTaylor, x Tommy x S x, JPhinala, Crythor, brionyjae, JadeLilyMalfoy, doralinda, Julie Long, red-rose-priestess, わたしはわるいですよ, iamanevilgenius Julia, txcalbud, nickainai, Concerned pinkythepowerpixie, jordan , Raiyevern, Vampire Louis, & emeraud.silver!
Wow! Reviews are good, and thank you for sending me even the smallest notes.
Love,
mintapotter
