Part Five : Silence


It isn't that I know my fate, but that I am a good guesser. That's why it doesn't surprise me when I see that tousled head at orientation. And just when I think he has ceased to cause me such surprise, he walks over to me and grins ruefully. That, somehow, is unexpected.

"Hullo," he says grudgingly, hands stuck in his pockets. "Should've known I'd see you here."

I shrug. "I suppose so."

"Your father didn't come?" he questions, taking a seat on the bench beside me.

I smile briefly, bitterly. "If he didn't attend my mother's funeral, why would he come to Auror Orientation? You should know that, Potter." I watch him shrug, watch the fabric and shadows shift. "And no, you can't sit there."

"Too bad."

We sit in all too comfortable silence for several moments.

"So your summer -" he begins, at the exact same moment that I start out, "I told him-"

We both stop. Wait. Meet each other's eyes at some sort of impasse, both of our gazes hesitant. "You go ahead," he finally says. How gracious.

I sigh. "I told him what you said to tell him." He glances at me quizzically, not as much of a question as a curiosity at the outcome, and I roll up my sleeve. Pale white flesh there, unmarked. White as the autumn moon, not even marred by vague scars or healing scratches. Only in hazy dreams do I consider, and even then I don't want to be an object of pity or scorn. I don't crave sympathy, I don't need it. I don't even want it.

I don't want any symbol of pain or feeling written so plainly on my skin.

There is a strange look in his eyes when he looks over my arm and it makes me think that maybe all kinds of pain don't have to be written out for the world to see, inscribed in tell-tale lines of fading red. (No, some kinds of pain are quite the opposite: green as shattering jade, burning and needing and Avada Kedavra light.) It makes me wonder just when that pity and sympathy and all-too-trashy concern like my mother's cheap perfume in his gaze faded like the hatred did, replaced with -

"Welcome to the Auror Academy," a voice booms out over us and we both jump slightly, recoiling from each other with a guilty look haunting both our eyes. "Your choice to apply here is a choice that will affect the rest of your life. On your journey to become one of the distinguished members of our profession, you will learn things you've never dreamt about your life, your companions, and yourself. The experiences you will gain here are like no other.

"In short, this is the experience of a lifetime."

He is so near, delicate eyelashes and skin of toffee cream. There is something about his scent that makes me want to move still nearer. (Hot apples and caramel, Potter, with your cinnamon breath. There is something intoxicating about that gentle autumn spice, and I don't think I can pull away.)

I think about moving my knee to absently brush his, but the thought appalls me and I must look elsewhere. That's when the knee bumps mine and I jump to look at him in surprise. (Skin against skin, shared warmth; I feel the knobby kneecap and fine dusting of hair.) He looks back at me solidly.

"Pay attention," he hisses, having successfully caught my eye. I jerk away from him, eyes narrowed, focused back on the speaker.

"This isn't Hogwarts anymore, boys and girls." Somewhere during my mind's vacation, his voice has hardened from the facilitating, welcoming speaker to dangerous steel. "You aren't all comfy in your Durmstrang dormitories or surrounded by your previous schoolmates. This, children, is serious."

I hate condescension. I hate undue patronization, and apparently Potter does too. He looks curious and perhaps a little frightened, but mostly he looks pissed off. I can see the tension in his face.

"In the next four years," the speaker continues, as I notice how intent the others are on his voice, "you will need all you possess to get through. Your wits, your courage, your cunning, your cooperation. Some of you won't make it. Some of you will fail, some of you will give up." He sweeps his eyes over us, trying to gauge. "A very select few will make it. They, and they alone, will have the privilege of calling themselves Aurors."

I exchange a glance with Potter. Both of us know the challenge that the school provides, and neither of us looks very afraid. It is almost a challenge to each other; clearly, whoever fails or gets expelled or quits is the blatant loser.

I don't lose. Perhaps it's one thing I have in common with my father, as sad as it may be to admit such.

And part of my mind wonders, very briefly, what would happen if we weren't competing, weren't fighting, weren't enemies, but -

"Now, kiss your families a loving goodbye. You'll be wishing like hell to be with them for the next few months. Come on now, to the dorms. Girls to the left, boys to the right; A through H in the first, I through Q in the second, R through Z in the third. Get to it!"

We leap almost automatically to our feet and I follow him down the aisle to where the speaker has pointed. It surprises me a little that I only recognize one or two others. "Look," I say. "There's Jelena Thompson, from Ravenclaw? And he looks familiar, doesn't he?"

Potter shrugs. He doesn't seem overly interested and, surprisingly enough, the others don't seem overly interested in him either. Perhaps they haven't noticed his scar. We tramp together over the lawns, entering the stark barracks labelled, simply, M2. I don't look at him and he doesn't look at me. Are we walking together? I'm not sure. It seems, by the furtive glances he sneaks at me, that he isn't sure either.

"Wow." He looks around at the mess hall we've entered, then back at me. "It's - it's so not like Hogwarts."

I smirk. "Should feel familiar, Potter. Just as stark and bare as your homey little closet."

He stares at me angrily for a moment, before striding off into the milling crowd at the stairs. I glare at his retreating figure before I finally cross my arms and follow. Be damned if I'll change the way I am to accommodate him, even for four years.

We crowd up the stairs and into the dormitory. He sits his things on the bed two down from mine; we find ourselves separated by Mulligan and Mulligan, two equally sullen twins who have just dumped their things and exited.

We both sit. We both stare at our stark surroundings. Eventually the other boys drift off to explore and we are left to ourselves, both avoiding each other's gaze. (As Avada Kedavra green scares you, your jade gaze frightens me, Potter. What do you see with those eyes? What do you see in me?)

"So I have to spend the next four years of my life with you, Malfoy?"

From what I can tell, there is little malice in the question. "What, none of your precious fan club here?"

Potter shrugs uncomfortably. "Ron's working for his father, Herm's to become a Mediwitch. I don't know, Seamus applied but he didn't get in. I really didn't have anywhere else to go, so I applied here too."

"And the additional prestige of being The Boy Who Lived does help, huh?"

"How much did your father pay to get you in here?" he snarls back, shoving his bag on the floor. I listen to it thump and we descend into silence. Again, it is a comfortable silence: as if we are used to each other and quite satisfied in our voiceless communications. (Green and silver checkerboard. Tell me, what color am I today?) It makes me wonder, idly, exactly how these four years will go.

He rolls over on his back, eyes searching the ceiling for answers. "You do know I hate you, don't you?" he wonders conversationally.

"As much as I hate you, Potter." And yet, as love is blind, so is hate. How can I call it such, then, when his wind-chapped skin and ravenwing hair hover like stark photographs on the backs of my eyelids? How can I pretend he is black and white when he moves through the world like a rainbow umbrella on a rainy day?

"All right, then." He rummages with one hand (ragged fingernails, sketchy lines across his bruised flower petal skin) in his bag and withdraws a silvery bar. It's only after unwrapping it and taking several bites that he remembers me, gaze like wondering forest light shifting my way. "Um," he says uncomfortably. "Want some?"

I accept the candy from him and take a bite, the rich taste of chocolate stinging my taste buds into being. (Part of me wonders if it shows our maturity that we don't recoil from each other's saliva. Part of me wonders if that's part of the chocolate sweetness.)

"In the autumn," I say haltingly, "at Malfoy Manor, the leaves all change at once. It's really beautiful."

He shifts on his bed, a reluctant interest tinting those eyes of beach glass green. Perhaps it is an interest in the manor, a thing of which I have never spoken. Or perhaps he has never heard me use the word beautiful before; maybe he thinks it sounds alien coming from me. (But I can think of many beautiful things. The sky. My father, when he is angry. The lake near to our home at sunrise. My mother's hands. You.)

"It's nice at Privet Drive, too," he finally returns in an uncertain tone. I laugh.

"Right, Potter. I was there. I saw your pathetic excuse for a room. I wore your ruddy clothes."

He looks away, out the window into the gathering warmth of late afternoon. "Speaking of that, I got the clothes by owl. Thanks." He grins ruefully. "Damn, that thing is vicious! Nearly bit my thumb off."

I smile, ever so faintly. Could he tell how reluctant I was to give up those garments, Muggle or no? Probably not. Potter was always that dense.

"So you-" I begin, at the same time he says, "We aren't-"

"You go."

"Nah. Go ahead."

"Seriously, just-"

"-say what-"

"-you were going to say!"

We somehow end up glaring at each other, as if we do not deserve to finish each other's sentences. Silence rules us for several moments, until I finally throw caution away and dig in my pocket. Finding the object, I stretch out my hand and say quietly, "Here."

He regards me as if I'm trying to poison him or perhaps give him something really nasty, but he opens his hand nevertheless. Clearly, the pebble that lands there surprises him. "What the hell?" his gaze seems to ask me.

I shrug. "It's a stone."

"I can see that."

"I - I sort of put protection spells on it," I say. "To, er. Protect you."

He raises an eyebrow. "Way to state the obvious. Again. Why, Malfoy?"

"Because who else am I going to talk to if you go and get yourself killed? Mulligan and Mulligan, here?" When I get no response from him, I look away. "And you did try to help."

(Bewilderment flutters over his face, tinting his cheeks and swirling his gaze and twitching his lips. The second time in a single moment I have surprised him, and I find that I like keeping him off balance like that. Find that his expressions are not numerable, after all.)

"I - I suppose I did." There is a hesitant tinge to his face and I am startled to see him blush. Perhaps he is not the only one kept off balance. "Um. Sorry for being, you know. Rude about it."

"No." We both look away, gazes pooling with the shadows in opposite corners of the room. "Don't be."

Silence, as cold and final and filled with hazy gray as impassive stone, drifts between us like a strange sort of bond. He glances down into the palm of his hand tickled by the tiny stone I have given him. "It glows," he says softly. He picks it up, turns it almost wonderingly between his fingers. (Was there a time you would push it away; was there a time when you would feel it was contaminated by my overwhelming black? Tell me, now, how gray ceases to scare you. How its ashen touch has graced your lips and skin and slipped through your fingers, tainted your gaze and dusted your cheekbones; how its brave, ambiguous light has traced all the lines of your skin and settled there like I want to for eternity. Show me.) "Is that because of the spells?"

"Probably." I remember my surprise at, when fiddling with the pebble, seeing it begin to throb with a steady green light.

"Slytherin green, huh?"

"Your eyes are green."

He smiles, suddenly. Fleetingly. (What have I done to so deserve? When have I noticed your smile is sweet like vintage wine, bittersweet and enchanting and powerful?) "That's true."

We slip, smoothly and complacently, without struggle, back into the strangely comfortable silence. Sharing the nuances and shadowy comforts of this quiet.

"So," he finally says, gaze tickling the ceiling, "what exactly is so different from Muggle clothes and wizarding clothes? You were so adamant about not wearing mine, but you wear the same thing under those robes."

I smirk. "You sure about that, Potter? The latest fashion is to wear nothing at all."

"Oh, right. Sure." He rolls his eyes. "Seriously, I'm asking."

"There are shops," I shrug. "You know, same styles, but made by wizards. No Muggle touches the clothes."

"Ah," he says, sarcastically. "I see. That makes so much difference."

"To some people, it does." I frown at him. "Look, Potter. I know this is a screwed up world and that you don't agree with most of it. Hell, I don't agree with most of it. But you still don't know the first thing about it. You've got to understand: we've lived this way for thousands of years. You can't just blow in here and change everything with a snap of your fingers. Even if you are Harry Potter."

"I-" He glares at me, probably for lack of anything else to feel. "I'm not trying to. Just - just because things have been this way forever doesn't mean they always have to be. Don't you people ever change?"

"It takes time. That's what you don't get. Gradual change has been building up for years."

"What if that's not good enough? What if you're just all scared to death of it? You're just all clinging to the roots of your family trees and the pathetic power you collect but nobody ever tries to change anything. Doesn't anyone ever question the status quo?"

"The hell do you think we're in the middle of right now, Potter? What do you think Voldemort is, a madman?" Pause. "Well, maybe he is, but do you know where it started? He wanted change."

"The wrong kind of change."

"It's still change."

He stares at me, then reluctantly shrugs. "I suppose you're right. Doesn't mean I support it, though."

I shrug back. "You don't have to."

The curve of his lips, seashell pink, like the pulse of the autumn sky just before the sun sinks to final rest. And I wonder, truly, if the rush received by provoking that smile is a power that can ever be satiated. (I could not lose myself like you, Father. Not in porcelain statues, one of them your wife. Not in mindless servitude. Not in fleeting moments of control.

There are other kinds of salvation. I will not be the martyr at your altar, lifeblood slipping so you can be your own god.)

Save your last drops from the shadow. Dragon's blood may save but it also condemns.

"Malfoy? Malfoy!"

"What?" I snap, irritably.

"You blanked out. Just, totally didn't hear a word I said."

"Oh. Sorry."

And since when have we stopped trading words like blows and started trading them like things to be shared? Perhaps it is since the pieces we play with are all the same now, not mine, not his, but simply ours.

("Sharing," Father once lectured me, after I lent a childhood toy to a Muggle at the park, "is only appropriate when the other is your equal. And you, Draco, are always better. Remember that.")

(Are we equals, Potter?)

Sharing. Sharing drinks, conversation, a broomstick, clothing, time, laughter, the room, silence. Are we-

"We aren't friends, you know."

I stare at him, coldly. "I know."

"Never will be."

"Wouldn't want to be."

"Good."

"It's mutual."

He turns over, restlessly, and stands up. Regards me with that gaze of shattering jade as if he is probing my mind with those green glass shards. "I.... Uh.... I'm going downstairs. You coming?" I stand, wordlessly, noticing that he's slipped the pebble in his pocket and is absently fiddling with it. I smile faintly and follow him to the door. We descend in companionable silence.

Autumn is colorful, drenched in the rich tones of crimson wines and spices and the flush of his cheeks and the veins with their precious blood pumping beneath his cinnamon skin. Somewhere in the change of seasons we have slipped from everything we knew in the past and something between us has transmuted into something else.

Something as strong as stone and sweet as chocolate and slow as the silence we breathe back and forth.

Something shared.