A Matter of Truth

By Green

Series: 'What Matters' Series 3/3

Sequel to 'A Matter of Trust' and 'A Matter of Belief' you'll need to read them to understand this

Disclaimer: Not mine

Rating: R

Warnings: SLASH

Feedback: green99bottles@aol.com ….pretty please * g *

~~~~~~~~~~

When he wakes up, I'm there. And so the first thing he sees, the first name he says, is mine.

'Ron?'

I take his hand, lean over the small bed and smile at him. Because I've been thinking all this time, and I think I finally know and I think…

But then he pulls away. Turns his back to me.

'Draco? What is it?'

His voice is quiet and artificially steady:

'I think you should go. I think you should leave.'

'You want to be left alone?'

'No. I want you to go.'

You know it's funny, fucking hilarious actually, because although I never scored well on those logical reasoning tests I got what he meant in about a nanosecond flat.

'Why?'

He kept his face to the wall. Silence.

'Draco Malfoy I am not going to let you give me bloody orders. I think I deserve a reason.'

Silence.

'What is this? Out of nowhere! I know you're upset about earlier, you think I'm not? What? Did they say something about me? Did they tell you some lie? What did they do to you? Please, tell me what the matter is.'

Silence.

~~~~~~~~~~

When I came around in the cellar several hours earlier there had been a brutal silence.

Darkness.

No one.

'Draco!' I screamed into the darkness. No answer.

Even moving my muscles enough to talk hurt. I could feel a sharp pain in my arm and there was blood congealing on my skin, itching as it dried.

Something tugged at my mind, shouting loudly through the pain and the mess…as much as I wanted to slip back into oblivion, I knew that there was a reason that I couldn't…

* Draco *

Taking a deep breath, I reached into my robe and found my wand, which luckily came through unscathed.

'Lumos!'

The light told me nothing I hadn't already guessed - I was lying on the floor of the cellar and I was alone. No remnants of my attackers remained besides the mud from a hundred boots on the floor.

Which means Draco had to be somewhere else. Which meant that I had to get to somewhere else.

Seeing him being restrained like that made me quake, made me want to explode, because they were * saving * him, keeping the best till last, doing me over as a practice before they moved onto him. I felt… there isn't even a word. Angry sounds laughable compared to how seeing him like that made me feel.

But anger, or whatever it was, helped. I started to move, inch by inch, trying to get up and walk. To reach the stairs. Get up them. Stairs I came down so recently in a kind of joyful haze… If only he'd taken me somewhere else - the Lake or the pitch or the Astronomy Tower. If only…

And then I was standing. So I have to get up the stairs next. I can do this. * He * could do this if he was here, so I can.

I can do it for him.

~~~~~~~~~~

'Draco, please, tell me what's wrong.' I've got up from my chair and I'm sitting on the bed, and I know I'm invading his personal space, and I know I shouldn't still be here begging, but…

He's all hunched in the bed, knees curled up in the foetal position, head angled down so the light reflects off his hair. It was caked thick with mud when he came in, but Madam Pomfrey cleaned him up well. The weird thing is that it only makes him look more vulnerable - covered in mud and blood you look like you fought, but cleaned and tidied it just appears like someone walked in and took a scalpel to you, clean and neat and without encountering resistance.

I can see he has this little cut on the back of his neck where someone kicked him.

I can hear his unsteady breathing, I can see his ribs rise and fall beneath the blanket.

I know he's trying to make me leave, but…

~~~~~~~~~~

The question has to come; 'When did I ever start to care what happened to Draco Malfoy?'

The problem with questions like that is that they assume you're watching out for beginnings and root causes. That you aren't just buoyed along in a whirl until one day it's all there before you and it just is, as if the world couldn't be any other way.

As if you could never imagine wanting it any other way.

In the Trophy Room, the way he held me… That was the first time I ever thought that he…the first time I let myself dare to feel safe with him.

But then, I'm the one who moved to his arms for comfort. I was the one who asked the question, whatever it was.

And it was only as I found myself deep in his arms, sneezing dust from the greenhouses where he'd waited so long for me, left to * find * me…it was only then that I figured out how much I wanted him.

But I didn't say it. I still couldn't see how that could ever be possible.

I could tell, the next day, that it had affected him too. I could tell he couldn't take his eyes off me. I could tell how much he wanted to walk over to me and just… Whatever it was that 'ordinary' couples did when they met in corridors.

I stared right back at him, and when I saw his pale skin flush over it only made me smile because I knew what would happen later and even though it scared me it also made me feel ripples of excitement like there were little sparks in my stomach.

We had * embraced * for the first time that night in the Trophy Room, and somehow that felt more important than all the times we'd… You see, we hadn't, I mean…

We had never trusted each other. We were too careful to watch out that we never seemed acquiescent or dominated, too careful not to check every moment that neither had gained the position of power, that neither gave without receiving first.

So until then it had been something exciting and heated and all an adolescent boy might dream of, but in all honesty we did nothing that we might not have done equally easily had we been alone. Perhaps because we almost wished we were alone, back then, we were still embarrassed on some level - of each other, of ourselves.

But after he held me close, after I fell into his arms and he just brought me near to him and we clung together, after that it had to change.

That night, when he kissed my mouth he didn't remove his lips from me again. Not until I lay finished and languid and all that was left that I wanted was to snuggle with him into a heap of blankets.

And it was so amazingly, fantastically…we were…he…I think I told him he was beautiful, cringeworthy as it sounds. But, when he's near me, and he's happy, and I've messed up his hair really well - Oh god, my hands were all over his hair, in it and through it and pulling it because I had to * hold * like I was on a rollercoaster, like I was going to fly and I could * touch * him as he knelt there - and I can touch him all over, or could if he wasn't clinging to me like a limpet and he's maybe breathing * just * too fast and deep… 'Beautiful' really isn't adequate, isn't the right word, but it's the only way I can describe how I see him just then. It's how he makes me feel.

It's time like that that I feel most guilty for doubting him.

It's not like every relationship is easy, I know that. But with him, I mean, sometimes he is just so… Sometimes I think he hasn't changed at all.

Quite recently he pushed me down and sat on my lap, facing me with his legs around my waist and started to kiss me - passionately, deeply. Then he suddenly stopped.

'Dra…? Wha?' I tried to pull him back, but he held my wrists firmly and his face was blank. Cruel.

'It's a house match tomorrow Ron. Who do want to catch the snitch?'

'Draco, what the fuck is this?' I struggled, but he wouldn't let me go.

'Who do you want to catch the snitch, Ron, him or me?' His tone was so absolutely perfectly expressionless that I knew this was a very Big Deal. He's only like that when he knows you really need some emotions to read off how he's feeling.

'Draco…' I sighed, willing him to tell me it didn't matter and knowing the longer I didn't answer the more important this would get. 'Who cares if you catch it or he does? You've said yourself you don't care about the house system any more. You said you'd grown out of it. Does it really matter who catches some piece of sport's equipment?'

'You don't get it, do you?' he replied, very softly but with a rough edge to his voice. 'How it feels, to be up there, one against the other. It's personal. Every year we've been at this sodding school I've raced against Harry Potter for the snitch. It matters very much to me. But then, that isn't what I asked you, is it? I asked who * you * wanted to catch the snitch.'

I stared at him, I couldn't believe he'd try and pin me like this, force me to choose and tell him my decision.

'Draco, even if I told you, how would you ever know if I'd told the truth or not?'

I pushed him off me and walked out. We hadn't argued, exactly, because I couldn't quite bring myself to make an issue out of it. He was so different, at times, and I always tried to forget when he could be…harsh. He never physically hurt me, or even really insulted me, but he's a boy with a lot of darkness inside.

I didn't ask to know that some days, some hours, he could also be perfect. But I do and I can never unlearn it. That's partly what ties us together. We see each other with the clarity only enemies could have.

Only lovers could have.

~~~~~~~~~~

'Fucking. Leave. Me. Alone.'

He won't look at me, still, and his voice is harsh and low. He throws the words out like he wishes they were punches.

'Draco, you are not pulling this shit with me. I know you, remember? And you know me and you know I won't let this just be your random decision.'

But I'm starting to panic, now, because I * think * he's having a mood swing, that he's not serious, but then again, maybe he isn't. And that makes a kind of vacuum in my chest, just waiting to swallow me up.

I lift my hand, slowly, tentatively, and rest it on his side. He waits a second too long before he twitches and shakes it off.

When did I fall in love with you?

What a time to have an epiphany, but something in that moment, that space, that sensation as my hand touches him opens some barrier in my brain and I * know *.

His silence gets louder and louder, but I won't break it.

I won't break.

I can be as stubborn and difficult as he can and I am going to make him say this, whatever it is. I'm not giving in.

~~~~~~~~~~

There are far….far….too many stairs in this school.

But I'd reached the top. I'd got there, got out of the cellar. And if I could fight this long and this hard, *he * had to be OK, right?

Not in the corridor. Not in the Hall.

Outside.

I stumbled to the door, and hung onto it, looking out at the painful morning light. The sun was hanging bloated as a stomach ache in the air, the grass sharp and frosted. Trees, water, flowers, outbuildings…

Cold air whistling.

Draco…

I saw him out of the corner of my eye first, because he was away to the right, but near to the steps, stretched out like he was trying to get to them. There was far too much pink on the frost around him and I ran and fell and collapsed by him and shook and shook him and pulled him close and cursed and pleaded and kissed his forehead and cried…

At some point people ran out of the building and took us up to the Infirmary. I wouldn't let go of him.

~~~~~~~~~~

'When they attacked you…' he whispers.

I twist sharply round, I've been staring into space and waiting for nearly twenty minutes.

He slowly turns over and looks at me. He has a black eye and his lip is cut.

Whether he leaves me or not, those people are going to pay…

File it, save it. Later.

'When they attacked you, you looked up and you saw me.'

'Yes.' I don't want to remember, but I can - the panic, the pain, the terror that he would be next and the knowledge of how much they disliked him.

Because I disliked him that much, or nearly that much, once…

'The way you looked, just then. I knew what you were thinking.' His voice is horribly low and soft and terrifyingly lacking in anger or sarcasm.

'I was worried about you, Draco. I knew they were working themselves up to get at you. And after it had all been so…perfect.' I move my hand to his face and for a second he lets it stay and I think maybe it's OK.

He moves his hand to cover mine.

'And I believe you. So please, believe me?'

'What is it?'

'When I saw you, I thought you were deciding that I was behind the attack.'

'What?' I feel a kind of terrifying coldness at the very thought. 'How could you even imagine I would think that?'

'I know. I shouldn't have done.' He looks down at the bedspread, which he twists and pleats with his fingers. 'I shouldn't mistrust you. I shouldn't believe you're so incapable of loyalty or belief in me. I shouldn't always think that you value me as low as…as I've valued others. That's why.'

'Why what?'

'Why this can't go on.' Cold, emotionless…except that it breaks ever so slightly at the edges.

'No.'

'It has to be this way, Ron. How could this ever work? It was…fun, but it's not…it can't last. It's a stupid hormonal delusion.'

It's the way he says it that kills me, he sounds almost ragged. As though whatever he used to use to sound this way has been out of use too long to work any more. He twitches his hands into the blankets in a way he never would have…before.

As for me? I feel this sharp pain in my chest for him, this absolute and inescapable *tie * that I never wanted or expected.

'You know Draco, you're right in one way. I would have every right to suspect you of plotting against me, because, let's face it, you made almost seven years of my life as much hell as you possibly could and I actually fucking feared you for a very long time. But I never thought you were behind that attack. Never.'

I look him straight in the eye.

'It's not what I know about you that matters, it's what I believe about you.'

I feel that catch in my chest again, and a kind of heaviness in my throat.

I look up at him, pale and bruised and embittered. The one boy I've ever hated, the one boy I've ever…

'And you know what, Draco, sometimes this * has * sucked. Sometimes I've wanted to just bash you like I used to. But most of the time I've wanted to be with you, because for some strange fucking dramatic-ironic reason you complete me.'

I get up and walk to the door.

'Goodbye, Draco.'

~~~~~~~~~

'I want to show you something.' He had said to me, it seems like weeks ago instead of barely a day.

'What?'

'It's a surprise.'

Once I would have refused, point blank. Once I never would have even considered letting my guard down around him.

But once I might almost have been in that crowd, punching him.

Everyone makes choices.

And so I let myself close my eyes, and let him guide me wherever he wanted us to go. I decided to trust him.

I could only decide to trust him because I knew I could doubt him if I chose.

I only hope he knew that.

~~~~~~~~~~

The past week has been Hell. Unmitigated.

The investigation into the attacks has been going on all week, and so everyone's tense and edgy, whispering and accusing and scared.

And I've lost him.

I didn't think this could happen. I thought that whatever could occur, whatever people did to us, we'd be strong enough to weather it.

I guess I just never thought about what we could do to ourselves.

I wander around feeling like someone's taken the colours out of the world. I can't talk to anyone, I eat but I don't taste. I don't cry but I can't smile either.

I go for long walks after dark, when I should be working. Outside in the cold, with rotting leaves under my feet. Once we tumbled through them, and he held the reddest ones up to my hair and tried to find a match. Now they're all dulled and black and damp.

I still can't figure out if I did something wrong, or if it never could have worked. Sometimes I have this terrible fear that breaking it off was the worst thing we've ever done. Sometimes I hate him.

But all the time I know I love him.

That's the most horrible thing of all.

I place my feet one after the other on the icy ground, trying hard not to slip or stumble.

Today the worst day of all arrived. Endless dismal lessons followed by interminable silent meals in the Hall, stiffly quiet with all the unspoken accusations flying around the Year. When I get outside at last I want to yell or scream, but I would barely hear it, the wind's so loud. The rain lashes down onto me in rivers and the slush freezes my feet.

I walk blindly on, cursing and muttering and beating out my anger with each step I take. On. On. On. On. I feel stupid and hopeless and lost.

Then everything stops in my head but the terrible thought that I'm falling. Suddenly the ground is disappearing beneath me. The ice! I'm slipping away, losing balance. I fail my arms but I'm still falling, crashing, sliding, unable to stop myself, unable to correct myself, unable to stop the hideous, fast, inevitable…

SPLASH!

I reflexively brace every muscle as the icy waters of the Lake close around me.

I thrash and kick, but there's nothing, no bottom, no foothold. Water fights into my eyes and jars painfully into my nose. I can't breathe, I can't see. My foot snags itself into a reed that pulls and twists. I can't get free of it, I can't swim out…I feel the weight of my waterlogged coat pulling down, down…I can almost feel the first touch of the squid lurking somewhere in the depths just waiting…

I kick and kick but there's nothing. I seem to have been kicking for hours. Slower and slower.

I'm so cold.

There is a second splash behind me. A hand grabs my collar. Arms come around me.

'Stop. Fucking. Kicking.'

The voice sounds near and deep in my ear as the arm holds on, a hand reaches down to my leg. Then the arm around me lets go…

'No!' I yell, and the voice returns to my ear.

'You're caught, I have to let go of you to cut it, try and keep afloat.'

Time slides on again in a horrible mass of cold and choking. I can hear swearing.

Suddenly the tension holding my leg stops, the arms return and I am pulled to shore. I'm still swallowing water, barely able to breathe.

We hit the bank; cold hands pull me up onto the grass.

'L..l..lumos.' He sounds frozen.

He…it's Draco.

'Dra…?' I shouldn't call him that, because I only call him that when…but I'm cold and I can't think and I want him to be real.

'Ron?' He leans over me where I lie, barely out of the Lake. I can see how his body shivers in the wind and the rain, because he's taken off his coat and jumper so they wouldn't weigh him down. His torso shakes beneath a transparent shirt that clings and freezes him.

'Ron?' His voice has an edge to it, but one I've never heard, desperate and scared. He's got his hands on my shoulders and he gives me a shake, then pulls me up and hugs me to him so we're shivering close and together, his hand on my hair.

'Dra' I'm cold, so cold, it's starting to feel warm and sleepy. I burrow my face into his neck and hold on tight to him, trying to keep him close, keep him there, I need him, I need him more than air. 'How…?'

'I f..followed you. I always do. I can't leave y..you alone, Ron. Why did you have to fall into the fucking lake? You w..weren't supposed to see me.' He sounds like he's babbling, like he's talking to a baby. He keeps stroking his hands over and over my hair.

'Dra…' I smile into his neck. It's all lovely and warm now, all perfect, all exactly right. I can feel the sleepiness taking me over. I move my head and try to talk, but the warmth is too much and I can feel myself start to drift away.

'Ron! You're not falling asleep; you're too cold. If you fall asleep…Ron!'

I shake my head…it's too warm…too nice.

He's starting to sound really scared now: 'Ron! Stay with me! I'm going to get you inside.'

He gets his coat and wraps it around me, gently. Then he tries to pull me to my feet and eventually, with one arm around him, we start walking back to Hogwarts. I'm tired, so very tired. I stumble a few times, and finally I collapse once more onto the ground.

'You can't do this to me, Ron!' He shakes me again, but I feel like a puppet in his hands and I barely respond.

And so he places a hand on each side of my head and kisses me. Deeply, passionately…lovingly.

Somewhere inside me some spark ignites and I begin to remember what life felt like, what staying alive felt like.

He draws back and rests his forehead against mine. I feel his warm breath on my lips.

'Ron, you have to trust me. Just walk with me. Just walk a little more. Please.'

I get up once more. Together we walk on. He keeps his hand in mine all the way.

~~~~~~~~~~

'They should really just give us this bed,' he says, 'One or other of us is always in it.'

I blink and smile up at him from my prone position in what was only recently his bed in the Infirmary.

Then everything comes back in a whirl and I feel a sudden rush of despair. Last night is just going to make this so much more difficult, and yet…I remember the things he said, and what he did…

I feel a rush of heat that has nothing to do with the hot water bottles Pomfrey has laden me with.

He must be able to see from my face that I remember, but he doesn't turn to leave.

'Ron, last week…'

'It's fine, Draco, you don't have to go over it again.' I want him so much it almost hurts me. I want him with more than lust or even love. I like him. Of all the crazy things in this relationship it has to be the worst that it's taken me this long to know that I like him. That's why even though he won't stay he'll never quite leave me.

That's why it'll never quite stop hurting.

'No, Ron, please, I have to say this.' He twitches his fingers into his robes. 'Last week, everything I said then, it was right. This is…this was, crazy and insane. But since then I've missed you.' He looks up at me, vulnerable and afraid and so unlike himself and yet so absolutely perfectly him.

'I missed you so much that I followed you, just to look, just to be able to look at you again. I didn't know how much you meant to me. I didn't know how much you changed me.' His voice is sweet with longing and gentleness. 'I'm not good at relationships, Ron, I never had a chance to learn, but…' He swallows and looks up at me. 'But I know I want this.'

I breathe heavily. My eyes and his are trapped together and suddenly I remember how * hot * this was, how searingly amazingly hot and addictive. How easily I could just reach out and have him begging me to…

But he hasn't said that yet. He's still talking.

'I know I'm, well, me…I know I can be a bastard and it's how I like myself. I don't want to be another sycophantic sheep toeing the line.' There's anger in his voice and maybe a little hate, still.

Oh yes, Draco, I know you can be a bastard.

He kneels down by my bed. 'But I don't want to hurt you, ever, and I realised that if you knew that, if you could trust that that was true and still accept the rest of me then maybe leaving you would be the most stupid thing I could possibly do.'

'You're the one that said it.' I try for humour, but I'm still tense.

'Frankly,' he continues, 'if anyone screws this up it'll be me, and I probably will. But I want the chance to try not to. I'm not going to pre-empt it. When I saw you falling, the way I felt, it was like…'

'Like you had a tie to me fixed in your stomach and someone yanked it?'

He smiles and nods in surprise. 'I trust this now, Ron. I trust us to take our best shot at it. So, would it be OK if…?'

'ShutupDraco.'

I have no idea if he could hear the actual words, but he obeyed the command. Well, I kind of effectively stopped him talking, what with passionately kissing him and the general distraction as I made sure he could never ever bear to leave again.

He isn't perfect, neither am I. Maybe that's why we're perfect for each other.

~Finis~