"The Avarice of Angels"
Author: Ganni
Pairing: Harry Potter / Draco Malfoy
((Set in their seventh year, with Harry as Head Boy; VERY OOC))
Written BEFORE the fifth book.
Ch. 2 Rating: PG-13
Chapter Two: Remember when we used to look / At sunsets far away?
Harry walked down the halls slowly, the sound of his shoes slapping against the floor no longer matching the rhythmic beating of his heart. He used to walk quickly. Pass others, fly by, leaving people just enough time to register who he was, walking fast enough to leave his pain behind. It always caught up with him in the end, of course.
That night he'd been unable to sleep. No surprise, really. He'd laid awake, head turned sideways on the pillow and body in a cupped position around several wads of blanket, the way he'd slept for years, because his mother put him to bed on his side when he was a baby, goddamnit. The light by
Ron's bed had shined on his back, as it always did, and he'd always ignored it; but this time it was like a pillar of fire, something hot, searing his flesh- like the awful light of blame and confusion pouring upon him, boring through him, scathing him with the knowledge of his sins. Eventually he turned over and yelled at
Ron, who sent him an inquisitive raise of the eyebrow, but obeyed and shut it off. That had been the easy part.
He still couldn't sleep. He didn't even toss and turn, he'd always slept perfectly still, cradled on his side. Staring. He gazed at the wall and listened to the sleep-sounds and the night-sounds and saw shadows flicker and move as if alive, and watched the moon climb higher in the sky through his bedside window, wishing he could grasp it and be lifted up and away, out of this sweltering haze that he had been trapped in. Be dragged up into that navy expanse, humming, smiling because he was free. Would he ever be free? No.
He'd just nodded off from sheer exhaustion when the alarm began to shrill early in the morning and the blinding pale milkiness of Earth waking streamed in through the curtains. The other boys were climbing out of bed, stretching, yawning, following an old routine that they'd all followed for years; brushing teeth at exactly ten after seven, showering, dressing, out the door with books on hand at eight, never missing a beat. He'd never missed that beat before.
But this morning he was slow. He stumbled over his words when called on in class. He tripped in the hallway on the edge of his own robe. He stared at his lunch, sitting steaming on the plate, hungry but loathe to eat, watching as the bread came alive and flipped over to the less burnt side where there was no butter. There was a soap spot on his fork. He couldn't bring himself to touch it. The dull roar of a hundred voices rising and falling and twittering away like bird calls invaded his blank thoughts, all strung together like popcorn on twine at Christmas, pushing out any coherency that he might've had, filling his head with nonsense. That's what it all was, nonsense. He hated himself for it.
Somewhere deep inside he knew. He was afraid. People would see him like this, see him silently sitting and staring, stumbling over everything, head drooping and face expressionless, flaxen hair limp from being left uncombed and papers strewn in random piles. They expected to see him with head held high, person in neat order and papers clutched tightly in alphabetical order, mouth curled into a smirk or a
proud smile and hand raised in class with the absolutely correct answer laying on the tip of his tongue like a pearl, ready to be pushed out for all the class to hear and be in awe, and the teacher to appraise with her eyes and slight smile, nodding and giving
Gryffindor house ten points. They were looking around, like lost sheep, for their
Harry, their Head Boy, standing tall and radiating wisdom. Their eyes passed over him now, though, the boy draped in shadows, head hung from confusion and exhaustion. Who was he, this boy like a fallen city lying in ashes and ruins, once proud and shining but now desolate and desperate? Certainly not our
Harry. Certainly not our Head Boy.
And so he was all day, plagued incessantly with thoughts of Draco that took over his mind, slipping back and forth between conscious acknowledgement to unconscious dwelling on them like spun sugar, little thin threads of it that wrapped around and choked his brain. Who was
Draco to have such power, such influence over another, that his angelic image would never leave
Harry alone? Not since that meeting, only eleven or so hours ago? What gave him that right? What law of nature granted him such a wish, such superiority?
None. Tis the condition of LIFE, that priceless thing of bodiless grace, to be unfair- but unfair only to a certain extent. Never more than water to wine for one false deity, one beggar to become wealthy on coal, one child in every million to die from a knife to the heart. It was never more unfair than that. People only assumed that their own petty existence was the cruelest of all, that nothing could ever go right for them; they wore blinders to the world, unseeing and uncaring, ignorant of those with a plight worse than their own by far. Therefore no higher power gave
Draco this gift; that would be unfair beyond reason. It was yet another of the unexplainable mysteries of this so-called LIFE. There was no plausible cause, no conclusion to be drawn, no theory to be formulated and no answer, none, not an answer in sight and Hell,
Harry couldn't live like this, where the problem had not an answer based on fact and supported by evidence. Why? Tell me,
Draco, what have you done? For whom have you killed, sold your soul, your perfect body, for this gift? Never would LIFE bestow upon you such a terrible, wonderful, cold and cruel influence- so how could you have come upon it, come to possess it? Tell me.
Harry. Before I drown again.
"Potter." It was his Potions Professor. Snape, that bastard who had stolen his
well-earned points countless times over the years, and rained on his, goddamn, his parade, so many times
for so long a history of being teacher and student. But this time it was different.
Snape's face wasn't twisted in a scowl, or a smirk, or a sneer, and why were so many of those similar adjectives beginning in s? Fuck if he knew. But there was a more confusing matter on hand.
Severus Snape's face held something vaguely akin to poorly masked concern. This was enough to promptly shatter any coherent world that
Harry still had left, that he clung to.
"You've been acting very peculiar as of late, Mr. Potter. Are you
perhaps hiding something? Are you and Weasley creating trouble
again?" Snape was actually worried, despite the cold expression on his
face. Or maybe not worried. That would be assuming. Assuming never did anything but give the Spartans a face full of fucking Troy soldiers. The blithering idiots. He never assumed.
"Oh, nothing, Professor. I am absolutely marvelous." He slurred, then corrected his posture, the least he was capable of in his state. He was more than suspicious, but it was a dull, throbbing-in-the-temples kind of suspicious. It wasn't as painful or acute as, say, the misery he felt from not being in
Draco's presence.
Snape's eyes widened slightly, the only sign that he had been affected by the
uncharacteristic words, then he relaxed backward a bit, and moved one shoulder slightly, to the side, barely twisting it, and his fingers gripped the edges of his robe's sleeves, pulling them down so that they covered most of his hands. There was not a flaw in the
man's whole ensemble.
"Well, that's dissapointing." Snape spit, then turned on his heel and clipped away, leaving
Harry standing there in swirls of dust from the cracking pavement, tendrils of loose earth that rose up like steam and fluttered at his ankles, pulling on the edges of his own robes like
Snape's fingers, demanding an answer, yeah Potter, what the hell? What the Hell, what the fuck is wrong with you
Potter? S'not a ruler up your ass anymore. S'it's a meter stick. And you like it, don't you,
Potter?
Harry felt the blood start its circulation again, and the forces of sideways gravity propelled him forward. He began walking again, each step bringing the hollow sound of his shoes slapping against the concrete and an old familiarity that no longer bore comfort on its back. The wind was blowing stronger than usual today, screaming up and down like howling dogs, whipping at his cheeks and staining them red. A girl nearby laughed, her voice high and fake and false and bitter. It sounded like a gunshot. A rifle crackling in the air. The dogs fell silent.
Down the hallway. Turn the corner. Almost there, almost to the dorms. Harry looked at his feet as he walked. He wouldn't look up to meet the eyes of strangers. He didn't know if he could hold his mask up any longer. He needed to reach his warm, soft bed, and let the porcelain mask slip off, fall to the floor and shatter then by swallowed by the quicksand, and he could lay on his bed, on the perfectly folded and smoothed out covers, and bury his exposed face into the pillow and let all his emotions, now starkly apparent, bleed into the pillowcase and dye it, like blood in the ocean, purple-gray, as his bed sank, and sank, into the quicksand like a corpse who could no longer care, till it smothered him and robbed his breath of the whispers of
"Draco, Draco," and he was no more.
He had stopped. In the middle of the hallway. Staring at his feet. No, not at his feet. At another's. And he couldn't keep walking, because those feet belonged to someone who was standing right in front of him. And he would've kept walking, staring at the floor, at his own feet, if this person hadn't been walking towards him and for some reason stopped right in front of him, and hell, he was looking at those elegant feet that he had seen before. And the water was suddenly rising, the waves lapping at the sides of the boat and the tide rushing in, raising it up, and the water just kept on coming, because damn, goddamn, it was
Draco, and Draco was standing right in front of him. But he didn't look up. He couldn't look up.
"Potter." The word, like spun sugar, no, not even, more of a molten sugar, a powdered sugar, yes, that was it, and it was whispering his name. He wasn't alone. The water was flooding his boat and it felt so good, so warm and cool and full of the flame that God's great finger had sputtered out so long ago. And it was still flooding his boat.
"I have a time for you. Will you meet it?"
He nodded his head, it couldn't be helped, the water was rising in his tiny little boat and now it was to his neck, and causing his head to bob up and down, up and down with the lilting children's voices on the surface of the God fucking good water. Sweet water.
"Tonight. At eight. In the locker room."
Okay. That was fine with him.
And then Draco was walking away, and Harry felt that same panicking impulse to reach out, to grope blindly, to grasp that source of light and draw him back in, don't leave me here, alone, please, I've waited for so long for just you, only you, please, you, please--
But he caught himself. Frozen, he let Draco walk away, and never looked up, only stared at the floor, at the place where
Draco's feet had been, no longer staring at his own. They seemed suddenly gray and dirty and not interesting in the least. There was only that bit of concrete. It was lighter than the ground around him. As if a bright glow, several dozen mushed fireflies had been laying on it. And there were no specks of dirt. The floor near him was littered with specks of dirt.
And Draco was gone.
-------------------------
This time Harry directed his footsteps elsewhere. Not back to the dorm. Not there. He just couldn't look at his bed, he knew it would be stained with the ugly colors and run-off of his emotions. It would be gray, that's the color you got when you mixed all others. That was the color of confusion. Of his tears.
He feared that. Dreaded it. Seeing his weaknesses, the things he had smothered under parchment and textbooks for so long. It represented, for him, the ominous horizon, unholy purple light in which in he might finally fall. He wasn't ready to fall. He needed to know.
And so he went to the Pitch. The last place he had been to before his life had crumbled in eleven hours. The Quodpot field was deserted. Empty, just like the bottom of his boat. The water had all been drained out of it. Sitting on the bottom bench of the bleachers, he sat with his thighs slightly spread and hands falling down between them. Back a little hunched and eyes staring blankly out to that same horizon. It looked like a string. A string of purpley-red. Like spun sugar, the way it glittered form the last dying light of the sun. Those were his thoughts out there. Glittering. He had lost them, they had gone out to that place of unholy reaches, touching the ends of the earth and the bottoms of the wells in sinners' hearts, and scooping out the ashes there, breathing life into them and molding
Draco from their damp consistency that smelled of night-sounds and sleep-sounds and lies, and felt like the sheets at dawn when you've let yourself go overnight and robbed Mother Nature by stealing her pleasure and making it your own at three in the morning when no one's looking or hearing and it just feels so good to touch.
"Harry?"
The sound was so sudden that Harry jerked around, twisted around, and felt his breath rush out, in a bad way, not like it was being stolen by those angels, but like it was kicked out of him by a foot, not a good one, like
Draco's, but a bad one, like his own, connecting with his gut and ridding him of evil because goddamnit, he had been delivered from sin. And yet here he was, eyes wide and face pale, looking around for the voice that had called him out of the shell like it was a bullet aimed for his heart. And in a way it was.
---------
Colin fell back, his camera swinging suspended on its thin leather strap, with surprise at the stricken reaction the Head Boy had had to his soft call. He hadn't meant to startle the other boy, that was whole intent of his voice being soft and slightly inquisitive.
Harry had looked like he thought the whole world was against him, all coming for him, having it in for him. This was not what
Colin wanted. Colin thought he looked beautiful, in fact, so sad and scared, like a lost child- it was something rare for the Head Boy, never before seen,
Colin thought, something I must be the only one to ever have witnessed. My lovely
Harry. Am I privy to your secrets now? You dropped the key to your heart, there, for one moment- and I picked it up- and for one precious moment, I could look inside- and now, why, now,
Harry, you've snatched it away again.
The Gryffindor had tensed back up into his normal mask, but Colin saw through it. Something was different. Wrong. This was not the same
Harry that he knew and secretly, scandalously, for six years now, loved. This
Harry was changed, twisted, bitter, sad, lonely, and sinking. He'd be able to sense all this from a thousand miles away, any day, any time, perhaps even if
Harry was on that distant red-purple horizon, and he was here, on the Pitch, where he had buried his heart so long ago.
It worried him, of course.
"Harry, I um, I hate to interrupt, but- are you alright?" Wrong thing to ask the Head Boy.
Colin knew it immediately. Harry's features began to instantly twist into offense, although his eyes remained dead. "I mean, you just looked all out of it, for a second there, I was just a bit thrown off I 'spose-"
But Harry was already standing, albeit shakily. Colin felt a little portion of his heart collapse. Damnitall, this is why he kept his love secret. He never had the right words to say, the right thing to say. Every time he opened his mouth, it was always wrong, he was always wrong. It hurt to be wrong all of the time. That was probably why he fell in love with
Harry in the first place. The boy was always right.
"I don't need anyone... being concerned about me, whether I'm fine or not."
Harry hissed, then spun on his heel, seemed to pause as if this caused a slight dizziness, then set his shoulders and started walking again. He was looking ahead at first, then his gaze seemed to drop and come to rest on the ground, as if he walked looking at the toes of his shoes, and his broad back and blond head disappeared around the bleachers' edge and he was gone. Simply gone.
Colin slumped down onto the now abandoned bench, and ran one hand through his hair. Stopped at a tangle, then let it drop. Gritted his teeth to keep from crying, but failed.
"Damnit Creevey..." The words were strangled. "You always have to fuck things up."
Fin
Notes: Thanks to Abbey, who will probably never read this (the new version OR the old) for playing such wonderful characters that gave me such awesome inspiration. Thanks to Seba, Keith, my new "pocky" (for kissing-practice) Lee, to my brand-new Yami No Matusei manga collection 1-11 which I have been waiting for almost 4 years, and to paychecks on friday. Bless you all.
PLEASE review!
To My Reviewers: (Wow, there aren't many of you!)
glass_vase: Thank you for the compliments! I'm glad you didn't think it was OOC.... I am still firmly convinced. ^^;;; And yes, please do return for the next installment..
lela: Thank you! I also like that little children metaphor, although I messed it up a bit. You think my writing is dark? Cool! I've always tried for that effect but I don't think I've quite got it down...
Kimmy: Thank you for reviewing... and yes, I DO think that the bargain will help him.. ^_~
destinywriters: Thanks for stopping by this time! And if you're reading this, I'm glad you came back for chapter two!
Dark Fairy: You got the character-types pretty dead on... Cold!Harry and Tempting!Draco. Ooooh, yeah, they do sound good together... hehe. ^_^
Ladyblondhair: Thank you!! I will! Hehe
koureshin: Aww, I'm sorry it took so long to update here! I am! And I hate to say it, but it might be a while before I update again, though. I've got a new job down where my Dad lives, and it keeps me busy...
icklechuck: Thank you for the compliments! That is what I was really trying to go for, the imagery... that's probably why I used enough metaphoes to gag a camel... lol....
Chocolat elf: Thank you! Aw, once again, I am so sorry it took this long to update! I've been very, very busy...