BlackRose's Page
Chapter 7 - Standing in the Doorway
----- Ron -----
"You can't help, Ron," she tells me firmly. She's wiped her eyes and scrubbed at her cheeks; she still looks like she's been crying but she doesn't look like she's going to start again. She looks worn and tired and resigned. "There's nothing you can help with."
"Don't tell me that," I snap back. The fire has burned down to warm glowing coals, the common room a space of shadows and darkness with us in the solitary pool of light and warmth. I shift, crossing one foot beneath the other as I sit on the floor beside Hermione's chair. "There has to be something."
But she's already shaking her head. "No. You've got other things to do."
I'm frustrated and tired. I just want to hit something. Which draws me back to my other worry. "What do we do about Draco?" I ask. I had told her what had happened; she took it rather well, all things considered.
Hermione looks at me steadily, the shadows making her older and more somber by the glow of the coals. "Nothing," she tells me softly and I can feel the cold of the darkness at my back sink across my skin with the firm finality in her voice. "It's already too late for that."
----- Draco -----
It's done. It's done, and there's no going back now.
Everyone looks different in sleep. When the conscious mind relaxes the masks drop away and all of the things we keep hidden in the daylight rise to the surface. Sleep is the little death - every evening we die and are reborn again, resurrected in our own image.
In sleep, we stand at the doorway between life and death, beginning and end. The crucible of change.
At rest, he abandons all of the little things he's taken to himself over the years. All the strengths, all the facades. What is left is the center of who he is - innocence. He sleeps the sleep of a child, even the artificial trappings of familiarity stripped away. Without the frame of his glasses to bracket it his face is softer, rounder, dark lashes thick against the curve of his cheeks.
Innocent Harry. Sleep makes you safe, keeps you wrapped in your blankets of comfortable oblivion. But not any longer. Time to wake up now.
He cheek is warm to my fingertips. The fall of that dark hair is thick and soft to the touch and my fingertips stray of their own volition to brush the smoother skin of a pale scar, tracing it down to brush at the curve of his brow. "Wake up," I whisper softly. "Wake up, Potter. It's time to be reborn."
----- Harry -----
Waking was like coming up from a deep darkness, velvet soft and rich, and he didn't want to. He'd had enough of dreams, enough of class, enough of being tired. Sleep - really restful sleep - was a treat and he didn't want to give it up, clinging stubbornly like a child with a sweet in its grasp. He fumbled, pushing away the hands that shook him and mumbling something even he couldn't understand. The hands returned, harder, shaking him roughly. "Wake up, Potter."
The tendrils of sleep slipped through his clutching fingers to vanish into passing memory. That wasn't Ron's voice. That wasn't Ron's touch. And the hard surface beneath his cheek, digging into his hip, wasn't the soft comfort of his bed.
Harry woke abruptly, one outflung hand groping automatically for the glasses which would bring the world around him into focus.
"You won't find them," a familiar voice said, amusement shading the tone. "And you don't really need them. Lumos."
The word brought light in its wake, gleaming from the tip of a wand. Harry squinted, trying to bring the revealed shapes into some sort of clearer focus. "Malfoy?"
He couldn't make out all the details of the other boy's expression but Draco was smiling and that seemed, to Harry, to be cause enough for alarm. The circle of light the wand in Malfoy's hand cast around them illuminated stone - walls, floor, bare heavy flagstones worn smooth and dark with the age of centuries on them. Harry swallowed dryly, clenching his fists, but the crescents his nails pressed into his palms only felt sharply real and the dream, if dream it was, didn't fade away.
Draco shook his head slowly, the smile fading. "This is no dream," he said quietly. It was a softer tone than his usual sharp sneer, cool and oddly somber. "You're really here."
"Where's 'here'?" Harry demanded sharply. "What's going on?"
"'Here' is home," Draco said simply. "My home."
Anything else he might have said was lost as Harry surged forward, fists clenching in the fabric of Draco's robe. They tumbled back to the floor together, Draco's breath lost as his shoulders slammed hard against the stone, Harry's weight heavy against his chest. "What the hell do you think you're doing?" Harry hissed, pinning the other boy down. "This isn't a game, Malfoy!"
But Draco was laughing beneath him, breathless little gasps without humor. The sound made Harry cold. In the light of Draco's wand, still clutched in the hand Harry had forced to the ground, the other boy's face had the pallor of a corpse brought to a jerking parody of life.
In the spell light, where the sleeve of his robe had fallen back, there were lines traced in crusted blood across pale skin and Harry found he couldn't draw breath past the tight contraction of his lungs.
Draco's laughter trailed away, his eyes glittering. "No, Potter," he said sofly. "It's no game." He pulled his arm away and Harry, with a sort of horrified fascination, watched as the motion pulled open some of the cuts. Dark droplets of blood welled up, trailing down like tears from the cut lines that traced the hollow eyes of the skull with its twining serpent.
"Draco..." Disbelief was cold and sour on his tongue and he barely caught himself against one palm, the stone scraping against his flesh as the other boy pushed him back.
"And if it was a game," Draco said pleasantly, dusting off his robe, "then this would be checkmate."
It was anger, surging up like bile in his throat, but beneath it he could feel the first bite of fear plucking with icy fingers at his heart. "I didn't think even *you* would sink this low," Harry spat hoarsely.
Draco only smiled, pale lips curving gently upwards.
Harry flinched back as the other boy lean in, slender face looming sharply into focus as Draco's low voice just reached his ears. "Where you are right now, Potter," he whisperd, his tone amused, "you can't even imagine what the bottom will be like. But you will," Draco added quietly. "When we're done, you'll *know*." He paused, drawing a soft breath. "And you'll thank me," he predicted softly.
Quotes from last chapter:
Tyler Durden: Nothing is static. Everything is falling apart.
-- Fight Club
At the top of the stairs is a locked room
My secret chamber that no outsider views
For entry is forbidden, prohibited
Behind this door is my other self
Not a picture in a frame nor a fresh disguise
But my other self
Immobile, inert and sanguine
-- Siouxsie and the Banshees, The Double Life