Part Four : Paint


Do you ever have the urge to create something beautiful?

That's summer. Someone - some master - wanted to create something so glorious and lazily utopian that he sat down and dreamt of summer. And he painted it with his palette of prismatic paints, illustrating the haven that everyone dreams at least once of. He gave it life and breath like his own Galatea, each stroke of his brush like a prayer on the canvas of the world.

Ding-dong.

The thing I love most about summer is the sky, the early morning dawn shimmering over the horizon in a blaze of heat. I love how the smoky clouds shiver across dawn's pale vanilla skin; lazy ringlets of cigarette smoke from petal pink lips. (Summer romanticizes everything.)

I can remember seeing those endless horizons reflected in those eyes of darkened evergreen. And I hate it. They are supposed to be bottomless whirlpools, swallowing you to oblivion.

I hate him.

But I still wonder. And that's probably why I'm standing on his doorstep, finger pressing the doorbell again and again.

The door opens and he comes yawning into the light, hair tousled and feet bare. I can see his tan line hovering between the ends of his boxers and the curve of his knees. (Still, he is midnight and summer bronze and liquid emerald fire, a peacock's glorified plumage. Living proof that he is no longer black and white to me.) His shirt is wrinkled, small and stretched and slept in.

"Malfoy?"

I cross my arms. "Hello, Potter."

"Y - what the hell are you doing here?"

Looking at him, I think that summer is surely a masterpiece, a mural that stretches and fits snugly like canvas over the surface of the world. Someone had to paint the azure-and-cream skies, the blazing flower petals as if trying out a new feeling of joy with a new palette of rainbow hues; someone must have dreamt of this variegated world and created it thusly.

A gilded dream, perhaps, but nevertheless. On the surface, it is there; when you are a painter, that is all that matters.

My words, when they come, seem forcedly casual. They probably are. I shrug a bit, the corner of my mouth twitching. "I needed help."

It's odd how I see the world in impressionist swirls, yet he sticks out like a three dimensional real life true to form realistic - It's something about him, I think. No, not the coffee skin or the light shining from those beryl orbs or the way his eyes darken and lighten with his mood; not the ridiculous expressions I find him in at the most random times, nor the way his hair slips like shadows across his forehead. I can't put my finger on it, but -

Somewhere in the painting of the world, he shines.

"You hate me," he says flatly.

"Yes."

"I hate you."

"Yes."

"Yet you came to me."

"Yes."

"But-"

"For God's sakes, Potter, shut up and let me in." I shoulder past him into the cool and shadowed home, glancing about me at the living room and wondering briefly if he is as much of a stranger here as I am in my home. If he is as forgotten and as isolated as I, both gathering dust as we sit and dream of - what, exactly?

"Look," hedges Potter uncomfortably, "my aunt and uncle are out shopping with Dudley. I don't know when they'll be back. If they know you're here-"

"Fine," I say. "Then we'll talk outside, if it bothers you so much."

For the first time I notice the concern in his eyes and it makes me want to hit him. "I'm gonna get dressed first," he says, glancing down at my robes. "Can you, uh, change? Please? If anyone says anything to my aunt and uncle, I'll be dead."

"Too bad," I shrug, "I'm not wearing your clothes. Muggle clot-"

He grabs my wrist and yanks me with him, scowling. "Fuck you, Malfoy. You came here asking for my help, so don't even pretend that things are the other way around." Ducking into what looks like a crowded closet, he tosses me a pile of clothes and leaves me in the hall. I watch as he shuts the door with a grin. "You better be done when I come out," he yells through the wall, voice muffled. I stare at the bundle of cloth in my arms, lips frozen in an expression of disbelief and hatred.

I hate him more than I hate my father at this moment, which says a lot. But when he comes out, I'm standing there uncomfortably in his clothes, eyes narrowed.

"I hate you, Potter."

"Good." He grins buoyantly and beckons me. "We'll walk around the block or something. I don't know when they'll be back."

I follow him, watching the way he glides through the shadows. He is wearing dark green and it makes me think of his eyes, those endless depths filled with shadow and light and every possible hue of green in between. (Monochromatic beauty; if I were to live in a one-color world, perhaps it would be such a shade.) His shoulders are wider than mine are and his shirt hangs awkwardly around my slighter frame where it would stretch across his. Only I'm not thinking of that, am I?

He shuts the door carefully. Before I can stop my curiosity, I wonder aloud, "Why do you stay here, Potter? If you hate them so much?"

He shifts that enigmatic gaze to me and I see few traces of hatred there, only the same puzzlement that lingers in mine. There should be hatred, shouldn't there? ("Contamination," Father had said curtly, cutting his meat with the same precision with which he performs everything. "Potter fell for it and contaminated the whole bloodline with that Mudblood girl. Poor son's half a Muggle! You learn from that, Draco.")

"Dumbledore wants me to stay here."

I snort. "Potter, we've graduated. Yet the old fool still runs your life?"

He grasps my - his - shirt and yanks me towards him, eyes now snapping with the fury I've come to expect. It's welcome, since I know it and am familiar with it and don't dread it like I dread the uncertainty of his sympathy or curiosity. "Don't ever speak of Dumbledore like that," he growls. "You don't know anything."

I look away. (Black and white, Potter. Paint the world in black and white. Make me simple like the piano keys and draw your simplistic melody from that. See me in no new summer light.) "Well, still," I shrug quietly, perhaps apologetically, "you have to admit that he's pulling your strings like everybody else."

Potter doesn't respond and I wonder if I've struck a chord within. Finally he sighs and looks away, turning his attention instead to a stone by the side of the road. He kicks it with ferocity, sending it skittering over the pavement. We walk like that in silence for a time, listening to the wind and the rattle of the pebble and the sound of each other's footsteps.

"So?" he finally says, arms crossed. The pebble seems forgotten altogether and I pick up where he left off, my kick sending it tumbling ahead of us.

"So?" I echo, one eyebrow raised. (What game do we play now, darting through our black and white squares?) He doesn't answer, simply waiting.

If I were a painter I could freeze time and paint him for eternity, trying to capture the burning ferocity of his gaze and the effortless curve of his lips and the way he relaxes when no one is looking like he's letting go of a façade or maybe a burden. I could try to imitate the windblown shadows that streak his caramel silk skin, try to reproduce the sheen of rosepale light that often hovers on his cheeks. (Either way, he will never be captured and bound in the starkness of black and white values, lost to meaningless lines.)

But I am no painter and he is no angelic vision for my canvas, so I must simply turn away.

"You know who I am," I tell the pebble, at length. "You know my father. It shouldn't be very surprising that he wants me to be - to be like him."

He narrows that interrogating gaze at me and I can't help it but to look up and meet his eyes. "What do you mean?" asks Potter carefully. "You don't want to be a Death Eater?" Perceptive, he is. Half a smile moves his lips when he sees me flinch and shake my head almost imperceptibly. "Say it, Malfoy. Let me hear you say that."

"Why?" The look in his eyes tells me that he is too dangerous to cross in a mood like this. (And how is it that I know and can gauge such mood shifts better than my own?) But then again, I am not in the happiest of moods myself. "I don't want to be my father."

"You don't want to be Voldemort's little bastard."

"Same difference," I growl as we catch up to the pebble. His foot snakes in front of mine before I can move and tosses the stone forward.

"I suppose it is." He's watching me appraisingly and I don't appreciate the guarded concern I feel emanating from him. I don't want it; I don't, actually, know why I am here. Yet I am and it's too late to turn back now, kicking pebbles down the street with him while wearing his clothes. Ironic, isn't it? "So why exactly did you come to me?" Potter asks casually, eyes still upon me. If I didn't know him better (do I?) I might be tempted to think he's reading my mind.

"Because." Shrug.

With my eyes focused pointedly on the ground, it isn't surprising that I don't notice he's stopped until he grasps my arm and yanks me back towards him. "Wonderful. Bloody wonderful. You supposedly come to me looking for some sort of help and then all you'll tell me is that you don't want to be your father, which I can basically guess anyway. How do you expect me to help you if-"

"I don't need your help, Potter. In fact, I don't want it!"

"Then why the hell did you come knocking on my door in the middle of summer? To take a ruddy walk?"

"Because…" Because the way he doodles in the middle of History, the way he scratches his nose, the way he chews in puzzlement on his lower lip when he doesn't know the answer; it makes me think he will maybe - he's Potter, of course he will -

"Yes?" he says, prodding the little rock with his toe. Eventually he pushes it forward, bouncing it along the pavement. (Jumping like a little child - happy, carefree. Was that ever me?)

"I-"

Contrary to what I might expect, he seems to gloat in my uncertainty. "You what, Malfoy?"

I glower at him. "You've already rejected me once," I reply icily, thinking of that voice that pushed me away as refreshingly cool as summer lemonade with ice cubes cracking. "Going to make a habit of it?"

"You never think about anyone but yourself, do you? It's all about you and your precious reputation. Well you know what? You're taking up my time and my life and-"

"It's not always about you, either!" I explode. "Forget you're Harry-fucking-Potter for one minute and give someone else a thought! The world isn't your little temple to be worshipped in. Right now you're everyone's favorite sob story, but tomorrow it might be me. Scared of that, eh, Potter?"

"I'm not a bloody newspaper story," he shouts, eyes blazing and snapping like some sort of magical fire. Avada Kedavra, those eyes. "Seven years and nobody realizes! I'm a person!"

Looking at him, I think that that is what I am most afraid of. I don't want him to be more than the crisp black and white of newspaper words. Even magical pictures are two-dimensional. "I came here because you're the only person I could come to," I say quietly, as a door slides open down the street. We glare in unison at the curious head that pokes out until it withdraws reluctantly. "I - I didn't know where else to-"

His gaze is surprisingly hard and he raises one eyebrow skeptically. (I have a feeling that lazy Summer is painted in fervent tones of reds and golds and greens. Easily stoked to fury.) "Yeah? Well fuck you, Malfoy. You came to the wrong place."

He is turning away when I catch his sleeve and meet his eyes solidly. "I went to her grave yesterday."

This catches his attention and he pauses, frowning ever so slightly. "Your mother's?"

"My father took me." I watch the light rise and fall in his gaze. "He spat on that monument - you know, that angel - and sneered about the promises she begged him to make. He wasn't there when she died, of course, but he heard." A barely perceptible shrug, bitter. "Never thought he would come to her grave."

"What did she want him to promise?"

"To save me. From Voldemort."

There is a long pause in which I let my hand fall belatedly from his sleeve. "Will he?"

Snort. "Don't be stupid, Potter. Voldemort's power is the only salvation he knows." Watching him, I think I can see the world reflected in those eyes. Those changeling eyes that shift from the color of tempestuous seas to complacent forests to the lucent shine of summer leaves.

"You want my help?" he asks, confusion evident in his voice. (What colors am I painted in now? Every color comes from white. What colors come from black?)

"No, I just came because the thought of never seeing you again after Hogwarts was too much to bear." I roll my eyes. We are both standing face to face, our raised voices having faded into the stiflingly hot late morning and having lowered to tones of cautious questions. "I-"

He smirks at me. (Perhaps he isn't all saint. Yet perhaps the attraction of variegated plumage is greater than dove feathers.) "You can't say it, can you? Poor, proud Malfoy can't admit that he needs help."

"That's not-"

"You're just like your father," he taunts. "Too proud to do anything but the worst."

I've been told that I freeze up when I am the angriest. My features slip, set, into an impassive mask. I don't know, but that's probably how I look seizing his arms and coming preciously near to shaking him. "I am not like my father! You even dare to think-"

"Prove it. Say you need my help." There is a brief glitter of amusement in those verdant orbs and I wonder - and not for the first time - if he is not made of layers, paint peeling and peeling but always revealing something new. Unpredictable, that. "Oh," he adds, trying in vain to push back the tiniest upturning of the corners of his mouth, "and say please."

"I'd rather be a Death Eater."

It irks me to think that he's figured me out when he still lies before me like an unfinished puzzle. But maybe he hasn't, hesitance still hovering in his gaze even when his voice rings confidently. "Would you really?"

If silence attracted people's ears as much as screams, then the entire neighborhood would be gawking. I used to think that Potter was as fragile as blue-rimmed china or the rough parchment of Hogwarts that crumples in frustrated fingers, but he is iron beneath my furious grip and raging glare. (If he turns me to fragile glass, I turn him to rigid steel.) He meets my gaze solidly, waiting, and I wait for my resolve to melt like ice cream in the summer heat.

"Well?" (I thought only I was allowed to smirk like that.)

It's a whisper, when it comes. "I need your help, Potter. And you aren't getting a please."

"I'll excuse that to your bad manners." He's openly grinning now and I feel the urge to slap him. Possibly break him to useless pieces, fragments of power like a broken wand. But when he carefully removes his arms from my grip, his expression and voice are serious. "What do you want me to do? I guess I'm flattered-" his expression told me that he wasn't - "that you came to me, but there's really nothing I can do. You could always go to Dumbledore-"

"No."

"To be frank, Malfoy, that's your best option right now."

"No, it's not. Because it isn't an option."

He looks frustrated and I probably can't blame him. "Can't you just stand up to your father and tell him you won't be a follower of Voldemort?"

I was surprised the first time Potter said his name, but I suppose enemies like he can afford to not be afraid of the name. As I can afford to, because I am not afraid of something I have heard all of my life. "If I want to see my mother again," I say frankly. "In other words, Potter, of course not."

He sighs. "Tell your father or whoever you need to that you want to gain the trust of - well, everyone. You want to go to college or whatever before committing yourself to the Dark Arts because -"

"Because I can strike when they trust me the most?"

Though Potter grimaces, he nods reluctantly. "Do you have to put it that way? It makes me think you really will."

I grin at him, warily. Without mirth, really. "Well, maybe I will. How much do you trust me?"

He grins back with the same wary, bitter expression. "I don't."

"Good," I say, without knowing exactly why, at the same time a voice hollers his name from up the street. Harry! Harry, where the hell have you been? It is hesitantly loud, as if trying to avoid a neighborhood scene. He winces and there is a brief, panicked look on his face. "I'll - I'll send you your clothes by owl."

For a moment that uncomfortable look on his face is gone and he laughs. It's something, that laugh. Summer wind chimes, natural and easy and likeable. "What? You don't want to strip and give them to me now?"

I grin back. Very reluctantly. "No. Your family wants you." A large woman is standing on the doorstep, hands on her hips. She is, no doubt, demanding an immediate return home and a just as immediate explanation. I feel the slightest bit of guilt at causing the situation, but it wasn't as if he helped me to begin with. It wasn't as if -

He glances towards me, just once. "Good luck, Malfoy." And he is jogging back to the house. Without knowing exactly what I am doing, I bend down and pick up the pebble. Dusty, misshapen, and most definitely not black or white. (Gray. As is everything.)

I think that too many people want to create something beautiful. I think that too many people have tried and have failed. I think that I want to know just who had the mind to create Potter, because -

Because as much as everyone wants it, it's damn hard to find.

So maybe beauty isn't summer at all, or summer isn't beauty. Maybe his work is another dusty painting shoved away in a gilded frame at the back of a museum, lost to the collection of Time after so many years. Maybe that master dreamt too high and couldn't capture everything he felt; maybe beauty never leapt from his brush to begin with.

Maybe -

Maybe it was in a pair of emerald green eyes regarding me through crooked glasses, staring at me with a mix of curiosity and bafflement and fading hatred; maybe it was in the way his hair shines like stars on midnight when the sun hits; maybe it was kept in that effortless smile and casual shrug. Maybe it was lost in the nauseating rush of confusion that comes from having the momentum of your apathetic abhorrence stolen; maybe it was part of something no dreaming painter could ever imagine. (Maybe it still is.)

So much for summertime.