Chapter 6: Sunlit

Near the Kitchens; September 25, 1997; about 9 PM

Hand hidden in his pocket, Harry spent the next three hours finding any means of distraction. Without it, thoughts strayed and he was terribly aware of the tight ribbon on his finger and the lingering feeling of Draco Malfoy on his lips. Neither sensation would go away, and they hung about ominously if he did not concentrate on something else.

Seven to Eight o'clock was spent on schoolwork, various bits of essays and star charts, and ignoring Draco Malfoy.

Eight to Eight-Thirty was spent playing wizards' chess with Ron, with his usual spectacular failure, and ignoring Draco Malfoy.

Eight-Thirty to Eight-Forty was spent fiddling with anything he could get his hand on and ignoring that bloody bastard Draco Malfoy.

It was truly, truly maddening.

The nothingness of it all began to press in on him. In a fit of paranoia, he thundered out of the Gryffindor common room with the galleon in his pocket to ferret out that bloody bastard of a prat, Draco Malfoy.

Of course, finding him was one of those irritating things that are, inevitably, easier said than done. Harry found himself wandering the corridors almost aimlessly, keeping to the shadows and feeling rather conspicuous without his invisibility cloak. Poking around a stairwell that led to the kitchens, he spotted a ghost floating by and nearly choked in panic. As it was, he managed to hide most of himself behind a suit of armor.

He panicked again as the head tumbled off its broad metal shoulders. The helmet, clattering to the floor, sent a jolting clang to ricochet through the school. Before the feeling of dread took too much of a hold on him, the tapestry on which he had been leaning on shifted. A large, even hole opened up through the center, tangled with strings like a florescent spider's web and just large enough that he promptly fell through. It quickly closed again with the sharp hissing of threads flying back together.

Harry found himself on a balcony overlooking the lake. The skies above were delightfully clear, with the stars fixed needlepoints puncturing the darkness, and the wall behind him was decidedly solid for something that had just been a tapestry. It took very little intelligence for him to realize there was no way down without a broom.

He was trapped. It took a few moments to sink in, and when it did, he was horrified. There was nothing to do. Absolutely, positively nothing.

And he became acutely aware of the ribbon and Draco Malfoy's lips.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

"Why the hell," Draco said to himself, "didn't I steal this thing sooner?"

It was truly charming, waltzing about the corridors without the least care of being spotted. He did a pleased twirl, and the cloak whirled up above his ankles before settling itself back down. The whole experience of it all was impossibly freeing.

"Damn, Potter, you've made me jealous."

He raced lightly across Hogwarts' lawns. The chill awoke him, made him see everything he needed clear in his mind. It was revitalizing, and as he soared along, he felt sorely in his element. There was nothing like the cold to bring him back to what needed his concentration.

And yet, freedom distracted him. He'd settled into the dispassion he had kept himself in since the fire, only to find himself caught in a glorious diversion. Running sent him to the brink of emotion, the adrenaline imitating some sort of magnificent high that was akin to happiness itself. The closest he could get.

Poor Potter would never get his cloak back.

He ran and ran until he felt that familiar hitch in his chest, and then settled on panting out his contentment at a brisk walk. The castle seemed ominous from out here, like a giant beast waiting in the silences to swallow him back in. He had never had the opportunity so see it at large, and it was much more expansive than he felt walking down its halls.

It had more windows and terraces, as well. Few were lit at this hour, instead blending peaceably into the dark background, but those that were seemed very high up or lower down on the walls.

After awhile, Draco deemed it safe and spread the cloak on the grass to rest a bit. There were no lights on this part of the castle, as there were few rooms near the kitchens. Some windows seemed grayer than others, signs of fires burning dimly or farther within the belly of the beast. He shuddered, lying on his side with the cold silken fabric of the invisibility cloak pressed up against the skin of his neck, face, hands, back, and looked away. His thoughts strayed to those of fire-lit windows.

The first scream froze him, the second stilled his breath. They were deliberately soft, muffled as if stuffed with cloth, but all too familiar.

Fire.

Father, his hair flaming like strands of oiled rope, screaming his agony as he burned himself to dust. Dust that stirred in ever-restless patterns across Malfoy land, tainting it, soiling a reputation that had already been secretly bloodied.

I killed him.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

The darkness revealed a pair of skeletons. Harry discovered them soon on and shuffled backwards frantically, his back pressed against the adamant stone. Their long white limbs were tangled like those of lovers, but a slim dagger was coiled in a pair of bony fingers, and its tip balanced on a rib of the other. When Harry peered closer in morbid curiosity, there was a nick in the bone, and a pale brown undertone like that of faded blood.

They only distracted him for a little while. Sitting there among the dead was not as frightening as it seemed at first, and the pressure of the ribbon became firmer within his mind. Quickly, his thoughts turned to other things, anything really. Quidditch and schoolwork and how he hated that bloody Malfoy for putting him through this. How the weather was nice, and how he ought to send Sirius a letter tomorrow morning (disregarding the fact that he might still be stuck here).

Draco.

No, not Draco. Dear Sirius, I suppose I haven't written to you in awhile- sorry-

The sound of silence filled with soft kisses and the rustle of hair and clothing and meeting flesh. How've you been? It's been busy, hasn't it, working for Dumbledore. Can't wait until this bloody war is over; I wish you'd let me into it. Don't you think I could handle him? I've had worse.

The tightening of a string, the touch of hands, of need. Fudge is a weak old bastard anyway. We should have figured out ages ago that he was in the league with Voldemort.

 Why?

The question came suddenly, breaking through his battered train of thought. There was no logic behind that kiss. There was no back-up emotion- Draco had even been tame in his insults lately, not to mention in any other feeling.

He's trying to confuse you, Harry, he thought to himself, and glanced at the skeletal lovers. He's trying to make you pity him, make you think that there's a reason you should give in. Don't fall for it, idiot. The same thoughts he'd drilled into himself a thousand times before.

As the ideas continued to solidify, Harry let himself relax. That kiss- not even a kiss, that plot- was nothing, he added as if in postscript. It was worth less than a light snow, melting just the morning after, as if it had never existed.

That was when a harsh retaliation began, almost seeming to have been triggered at the very thought. Abruptly, the ribbon grew very tight, and then began to become thinner and thinner, until it was like a steel hair and sharp enough to slice. It hurt somehow much more than it should have, made more intense by magic or the emptiness around him. Harry cried out as it began to work into his flesh, then quickly bit the hem of his robe to keep from making more noise.

He clamped his eyes shut against the pain, which was constant and cruelly biting now. He felt it cut through skin before nipping at muscle. It would only be a matter of time before the finger came off. A ring of blood formed around it, following the curves of his hand to drip to the floor. So this was Malfoy's sort of torture.

I suppose you know best, after all, being the godfather here. Good luck; I don't care what Voldemort does. Don't give in. 

Sincerely,

Harry

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Draco was racing now, feeling the stones echo his pace rather than the grass mute it. Towards the screams, he ran on and on, recognizing the hitch growing in chest but ignoring it. He raced on, racing himself to stupidity to end the horror, end the pain, end the torture. This was wrong- he hadn't meant for it to become like this-

He had forgotten, lost himself in the moment. He hadn't remembered what pain felt like, what screams felt like, even when it came to your enemies.

They grew louder, perhaps amplified by his mind, perhaps not. He followed them, always waiting for the cries to grow long and slurred and desperate.

No! The cloak whipped like an emblem behind him. I didn't know, Potter, I forgot, forgive me-

Somehow, he had forgotten torture. Its part of your damn fault too, Potter. You can't let my hate for you get out of hand, don't you remember? He thought it almost whimsically, with a pained smile.

He'd forgotten what the screams sounded like. Perhaps it hadn't occurred to him that, even after all his efforts, that Harry could be injured, Harry could be tainted and in anyway impure. He didn't realize that Harry could feel, and thus know pain.

I wouldn't wish that on anyone. No, not even myself.

He found the source soon enough, the tapestry seemingly vibrating with the screams now. He muttered a Severing Spell, watched as the threads ripped open in a long slash, felt the emptiness of a broken spell. He dived through with no regrets, tossing aside the invisibility cloak.

For a second Potter looked at him as if seeing a savior. It was dazzling. His eyes were ringed with a certain bloodshot hope that Draco had never seen there before.

As all things do, it passed; that familiar hatred darkened the eyes Draco knew so well. It didn't matter. Potter was lying curled up on the floor, his sleeve clenched between his teeth, sweating. The blood had run from his fingertips to the floor, and was staining the side of his face. With the least hesitation he could allow, Draco fell upon him and shouted the counter-spell almost hysterically.

Silence.

Their limbs had somehow become tangled, their faces close enough to caress. Draco could feel Harry's breath thaw his cold lips and his own meet and mingle with it.

Silence.

"Idiot," he rasped, panting, not wanting to know what Harry would respond. It would kill him to know.

Silence.

They say a kiss is a lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words become unneeded. When it finally came, Draco meant only to mute him. Or perhaps he hadn't meant to at all; it felt like an accident, felt light to his lips like a brushstroke, and he could only stop staring when the sounds of footsteps came from the outside corridor. The pace quickened at the sight of the torn tapestry.

For a moment he was reluctant to break away, afraid that something would shatter. He knew now that Potter was human and felt human pain, and it made him seem suddenly delicate. It wasn't right.

Things were meant to stay the way they always had between them. Their hatred was what kept him waking at sunrise, kept him breathing as the day wore on.

Then why did it feel so good for this to change?

Diving away, he pulled himself underneath the invisibility cloak, trying to still his breaths before they revealed him, or perhaps before things became too clear. Harry was left bewildered.

Professor Dumbledore was worried in a pleasantly calm way as he moved through the tapestry. He glanced once at the skeletons, only once, and did not look at them after. With a series of simple healing spells, he healed Harry's wound, speaking gently only when words seemed fit.

"Would you like to tell me what happened here, Harry?" If he sensed Draco hiding there, beneath the cloak, he made no inquiries about it.

"Nothing, sir." His shaken voice fooled no one.

The headmaster's eyes sparkled.

"I made a wrong turn, sir, going to the kitchens, and fell through. It was an accident." It didn't explain the wound.

Draco could concentrate on nothing but his breathing, made deliberately long and silent.

"Ah, yes. Going for a midnight snack, I suppose; I would reprimand you, but I was doing just the same myself." Pause. "Were you venturing off alone?"

Harry's gaze shot treacherously towards the invisibility cloak, and the thief trembling beneath it.

Go on, Potter, he thought, make this last move. I get expelled from this school for magically assaulting another student, and that'll be the end of it, right? You'll win, and it'll be as if this rivalry never happened. You win, Potter, it would take an idiot not to see it. You've won once and for all.

Harry stared and stared. Go on, Potter.

Strike this final blow; that's how it works, that's how it bloody works. I thought you played by the rules.

"No one, Professor. I came alone. There was no one with me."

The headmaster smiled, and soon his back was retreating through the tapestry. "I thought as such, Harry. It is late- if your appetite for breaking rules is sated, I suggest you get on back to bed now."

Harry was quick to follow. While the headmaster continued towards the kitchen, Harry turned the other way for the Gryffindor dormitories. "I will. Goodnight, sir."

"Goodnight Harry. For future reference, your invisibility cloak might be useful when out at night."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir. Thank you"

Their footsteps fell in opposite directions. When he could no longer hear them, Draco stood and left the balcony. Even in his mind it was silent. Making his long way to the Slytherin dormitories, he clasped the cloak around him and let his thoughts sleep as he walked.

A slim white dagger was balanced carefully in his hands.