Warning: I have rated the story an R because of an implied Harry/Draco
slash pairing. So please avoid this fic if you do not like the idea of a
same sex romantic pairing.
Oh, and Draco dies. Yep.
Disclaimer: Everything is the property of J.K. Rowling. I'm just a humble dog not even worthy of dusting her shoes.
Train in vain
The parents stand on the platform, subtly divided according to their social class in groups of purebloods, halfbloods and mudbloods, squibs aside. They have spent solid winter months of waiting for this precise summer day and a slight delay has caused a certain restlessness in the crowd, a restlessness that is swelling up like a tide with every moment that passes.
But listen, there it is finally, the electric call of the Hogwarts Express that is now arriving at the station to bring the boys back home. Their ties wrinkled, their faces smudged with chocolate; all squashed inside that huge red cola-can, that screeches on the tracks and spits out thick puffs of steam.
As the doors sigh open, the exhausted passengers and the awaiting crowd rush to embrace like war torn lovers; a sea of black robes, miaoing cats and hooting owls. After this brief, clammy tryst parents and offsprings walk away, all seemingly full of purpose, busy with talks of N.E.W.T.S and the Sunday roast.
Two boys step out of the train last. An old lady in a green dress and a hat with a stuffed vulture on top catches a glimpse of their hands intertwined but decides it's none of her business anyway. After a short exchange of words, one boy walks away, hands in his pockets, his head bopping up and down to the rhythm of the crowd, pushing through walls of flesh hugging flesh, never looking back.
The second boy, the one who waits for the first to turn round and look back, does not move from the spot. His face, which is naturally pale has turned so white now that his skin seems almost translucent as if painted directly onto the skull. With the corner of his eye he notices his father, who is looking out for him. Dad is tall and smartly dressed, sweating in his formal black tie and sunglasses. The boy's hands are moist and there is grief lodged in the back of his throat like a chicken bone.
One eye-witness insists that the boy slipped, another that he was pushed by his father, and a third that he jumped from the platform onto the tracks, right as the train signaled 'DEPARTURE'.
While he falls the golden cage he holds in his hands breaks open, and his owl escapes at the last moment, swirling away from chaos, chopping the air with her thick brown wings. As the train screeches again the boy erupts in a brief geyser of flesh and dust and a little girl who stands close to the platform is splattered with blood up to her eyeballs.
'I've never seen so much blood before in my life' says the distressed ticket collector as he gives his testimony at the Ministry of Magic, grinding one cigarette after the other in the ashtray.
So after the panic and the screams die down the boy is still there, lying on the tracks, drained from blood, empty like a spent syringe. The boy who hadn't looked back finally does, and struggles to run closer but is stopped by a family of redheads in hysterics.
Tomorrow. Under the barely-present, almost-absent sun a balloon rises to the cloudline. The boy sleeps till late. He dreams of a place where he belongs, and wakes with his face crumbled and full of lines from the pillow and the covers. Down at the station the men from the Ministry have bagged the shoulders and the blond head, and are now picking threads of flesh from the molten wire of the bird's cage.
All told, it was a waste of a good body.
The end
Oh, and Draco dies. Yep.
Disclaimer: Everything is the property of J.K. Rowling. I'm just a humble dog not even worthy of dusting her shoes.
Train in vain
The parents stand on the platform, subtly divided according to their social class in groups of purebloods, halfbloods and mudbloods, squibs aside. They have spent solid winter months of waiting for this precise summer day and a slight delay has caused a certain restlessness in the crowd, a restlessness that is swelling up like a tide with every moment that passes.
But listen, there it is finally, the electric call of the Hogwarts Express that is now arriving at the station to bring the boys back home. Their ties wrinkled, their faces smudged with chocolate; all squashed inside that huge red cola-can, that screeches on the tracks and spits out thick puffs of steam.
As the doors sigh open, the exhausted passengers and the awaiting crowd rush to embrace like war torn lovers; a sea of black robes, miaoing cats and hooting owls. After this brief, clammy tryst parents and offsprings walk away, all seemingly full of purpose, busy with talks of N.E.W.T.S and the Sunday roast.
Two boys step out of the train last. An old lady in a green dress and a hat with a stuffed vulture on top catches a glimpse of their hands intertwined but decides it's none of her business anyway. After a short exchange of words, one boy walks away, hands in his pockets, his head bopping up and down to the rhythm of the crowd, pushing through walls of flesh hugging flesh, never looking back.
The second boy, the one who waits for the first to turn round and look back, does not move from the spot. His face, which is naturally pale has turned so white now that his skin seems almost translucent as if painted directly onto the skull. With the corner of his eye he notices his father, who is looking out for him. Dad is tall and smartly dressed, sweating in his formal black tie and sunglasses. The boy's hands are moist and there is grief lodged in the back of his throat like a chicken bone.
One eye-witness insists that the boy slipped, another that he was pushed by his father, and a third that he jumped from the platform onto the tracks, right as the train signaled 'DEPARTURE'.
While he falls the golden cage he holds in his hands breaks open, and his owl escapes at the last moment, swirling away from chaos, chopping the air with her thick brown wings. As the train screeches again the boy erupts in a brief geyser of flesh and dust and a little girl who stands close to the platform is splattered with blood up to her eyeballs.
'I've never seen so much blood before in my life' says the distressed ticket collector as he gives his testimony at the Ministry of Magic, grinding one cigarette after the other in the ashtray.
So after the panic and the screams die down the boy is still there, lying on the tracks, drained from blood, empty like a spent syringe. The boy who hadn't looked back finally does, and struggles to run closer but is stopped by a family of redheads in hysterics.
Tomorrow. Under the barely-present, almost-absent sun a balloon rises to the cloudline. The boy sleeps till late. He dreams of a place where he belongs, and wakes with his face crumbled and full of lines from the pillow and the covers. Down at the station the men from the Ministry have bagged the shoulders and the blond head, and are now picking threads of flesh from the molten wire of the bird's cage.
All told, it was a waste of a good body.
The end
