My Sandcastles Tumbled Down For You
By: ShinigamiForever

Warnings: If most het writers don't warn me about heterosexual relationships, why should I warn them about slash relationships? *covers mouth* Whoops.

Disclaimer: *puffs up chest* I am JK Rowing! MUHAHAHAHAHAHA! Just kidding.

Summary: Draco dreams of frozen sand sculptures and Harry. A Draco/Harry production.

A/N: There are two inspirations that combined to form this. One, I believe, comes from Ivy Blossom, in one of her fics. *scratches head* Can't remember which one. But anyway, in it, Draco describes these sand roses that people in Brazil make from sand and water, delicate things that shatter into sand dunes when you touch them. Another inspiration is from Jay, who writes about a fairy tale in which the princess must pick a flower without melting the frost. Finally, put those in the blender, and add in way too much classical strange music. And you get this.

So with that, the credit is spread, onto the actual fic.

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He thinks of the Slytherin bathroom, the bathroom no one uses anymore because it smells like shit even though nobody has shit in there for years and years. Smells like cleaning solution gone bad, and the toilets run rampant, so there are always wet paper towels on the floor. The locks are all broken, and the walls have obscene graffiti on them, but he goes in there anyway, sometimes. Goes in there because no one else will, and goes in there to listen to the water from the pipe drip away, drip, drip, dripdripdrip, drip.

Lying in bed, he wipes a touch of acrid sweat away from his brow and brings the wet fingers to his cheek, mind still ticking away with the water in the unused Slytherin bathroom. The sweat had lingered on his forehead for minutes, threatening to fall into his eyes and cause stinging fingernails to claw their way through the lining of his eyeball. His sweat is warm and smooth on the pads of his fingers. His forehead is damp with millions of similar drops. Some are beginning their slow insane descent, and he hurridly wipes them off, leaving more glistening wet trails across the skin.

The windows are open to allow wind to drift in on the humid summer day. Outside the world is wholly immersed in the sluggish laziness of distant rains and omnipresent heat. There is a tangerine wind, and it blows to remind him that it is still there to annoy him with its brevity. Hogwarts is unbearably hot in the summer, the stench of mold and wet humid walls a strange perfume. He thinks about swimming. But not really.

He has this sneaking suspicion, and it has really nothing to do with anything but himself, that all he ever thinks about is to keep himself away from thinking about something else, a particular something else. His mind has been set on run on sentences lately. He thinks of nothing other than what he doesn't want to think about. Now, he thinks, rubbing the back of his hand silently against his thigh, that didn't make much sense. Really. Not at all. And his hand is still rubbing aimlessly down his thigh, dragging the fabric of his pajamas along with the hand, and he stops. The silk is sticky from newly formed sweat and clings perpetually against his body.

And when it doesn't cling, it slides, and slides so much, up and down, that he feels like he's drowning in some unable pool that flips him on his skin and keeps him there.

He reminds himself to tell Father to stop buying him silk pajamas.

The world is glass-shatteringly still.

He tries to stop himself, but some unnameable grip holds him and he walks over to the window where the sill juts out into the open air. There is something startling about the direct descent of the walls, the absence of solid stone, but the view is without end and too beautiful, a view of the lake, black and wet in the summer air. A breeze wrinkles the skin of the water. He leans out some more, hoping to catch the breeze full fledged against his face.

The heat. Drowsy and calm and sticky like nothing before, and he throws back his head and lets the heat slap against his neck, sharp with the nails of summer. The world is cherry and dark. For a moment, he considers jumping, but he pulls back and lands clumsily against the bed, the sheets cool and wet with his own sweat.

He dreams of nothing, and in that nothing, there is a blankness of color. He thinks, white, but it's a wet and casual black. And then--

Nothing. Maybe. Flowers in a field, their petals swaying like rain. And the color of the world is piano soft and pink. The stems of the flowers, a sea of waving heads and color. Something cold and wet brushes by his thighs and feet. Bending down, he is surprised to see that it is a blade of grass, green like someone's eyes and a clarinet song. He picks away at the grass, but it melts in his hand until it is a limp nothing. The flowers begin to melt, down, down, down, the color pooling at his feet in large quantities, heavy as he tries to trample across. The world is black again. The wet casual black of unconciousness.

There's something white and speckled drawn across his eyes. Like a blind man he reaches towards the white dot, and it moves in closer. Somehow, the puddles of melted color drain away. The warmth under his skin is throbbing like a background of drums. The dot moves closer. He leans in. The dot becomes larger. And suddenly-

an explosion of color and cold.

He thinks, Harry. The figure in front of him, carved of sand and frost and water. The eyes, unblinking. The hair, waterfalling. He reaches out. Something from his hand, warm, fire. Touching the frost and sand sculpture, melting it, the thin casing of Harry's-- was it Harry?-- skin unfurling and crackling back until it was nothing but unprotected sand to fall at Draco's feet, and he screams.

And suddenly, Goyle is in his face, beefy hands trapping his shoulder, and Goyle asks, what/s wrong, wake up, what/s wrong, talk to me. He lies on the bed and says nothing, comatose, until he blinks, looking up at Goyle, his own slender fingers around Goyle's arms, clenching so hard his knuckles are whiter than silk, looking for the dune of sand at his feet, and Harry's eyes, but he realizes that there is nothing but the dry blackness of the dorm room, and so he shakes his head. He says, nothing, a bad dream, nothing. Goyle looks at him, letting go, and Crabbe from across the room says, you/re crying. And he looks up, and out the window, where the moon ripples across the lake and says, no i/m not. And Crabbe says, yes you are, i heard you. He looks away from the window and brings his hand, caked in sweat, to his face.

His hand comes away wet.


In the morning, he has Potter under his hands, and he has Potter's shirt wrapped around his fingers, and he has Potter's eyes looking up at him, daring him to do something. He thinks again of the sand sculpture, and of Harry melting like a dune at his feet when he touches Harry and melts Harry's skin, and he lets Potter go so quickly that the Gryffindor is dazed and his green eyes are the green of disturbed marbles.

He brings his shaky white hands to his forehead in an attempt to calm himself down and he is so scared that he would melt that he doesn't notice Harry behind him banging his head against the wall in frustration.


A/N: Hah! Obscure and strange and totally incomprehensible. That's okay. The ending is, to make sure, Harry hitting Harry's head against the wall, not Harry hitting Draco's head against the wall. Why is Harry hitting his head against the wall? I don't know. That's just the way the story came out.

Reviews please?