On and On and Forever

Carpetbag

Installation: 2

Disclaimer: Sometimes I wonder what JK Rowling has Draco and Harry do when she's not using them in the book...

Surprise Surprise

Draco watched him. He watched Harry flip hair out of his eyes or dip a quill in the pot of blue ink.

It was sweltering. The late May heat was new and fresh and marking the beginning of summer, if not the holidays. The sun dipped low on the horizon, and the sky darkened, and they were both waiting for the chill the night air was sure to bring. The spring had been unusually hot. Hot in more ways that one, Draco liked to joke, unsmiling but pleased.

What cares have we? What fervent hopes that bend and sway in heaven's breezes, but never break? None, says Harry. None.

And they watched the flaccid sun go down, lingering, pausing to expel another burst of hot wind before slipping away under cover of night. It is rebellion, always rebellion that drives Harry Potter. Draco learned this the hard way, but at least he learned it. Far better to know the cause of your own demise, he once read, than to quiver and shake in the unknowing.

So Draco savoured the sunset as he would a sweet wine, smooth and calm and potent. And then the moon rose up from its murky darkness and unleashed its sweet praises on man's hearts. For the romantic and the cynic alike, the moon was a life within itself.

In the lingering gloom of the tower in which they sat, they exchanged furtive touches, a brush on the knee, a ghost of a kiss. As if the stars were watching, whispering. /Look at them/ they said to one another, /Watch them lie and cheat and hide and. . . Love/

But there were words unspoken between the two, never to be spoken to each other or anyone else. Because it was best left to wonder. Because neither really wants to know.

Because it is easier to kill uncertainty that it is to kill love.

There were no words that night, or righteous anger, or bitter accusations. There was very little in the way of thought.

The stars glinted sharply like seventy million mouth waiting to gobble them up were they not careful. So they were careful, and quiet.

Bodies, sweat-slicked from the day not facing the puffs of cold air that made them shiver and draw closer to one another. Arms wrapped comfortably and legs curled appropriately. And there they sat. In the window. Harry with his parchment and Draco with his dreams.

Draco had long since admitted to himself the limitations of the relationship. There was no worry or regret, at least not yet. But there was a sombre pall hanging over them like a heavy blanket. Harry, on the other hand, seemed to be trying to make light of the closing school year and the fact that at the end of it. . .

Draco had no plans to return to his home. He knew to openly defy his father was suicide, and yet to comply would be murder, so his only choice was to disappear. 'I hear Voldemort's not all that big in China' He would tell Harry sometimes, to get a rise. All Harry ever did was look away. He refused to acknowledge the end of it all, and he certainly couldn't follow Draco wherever he went. The Boy Who Lived was needed, even if Harry Potter was not.

Sickening though it may be, Draco felt there were a lot of positive things about leaving, even if no one could think of any besides the token 'living' thing. For example, there was the idea of brushing up on his languages, meeting new people, learning about another culture. Of course there were all very fine and good when he wasn't looking at Harry, or thinking about Harry, or speaking to Harry. So, he obviously never thought about these things.

Love, if one could call it that, had a strange effect on Draco. Love made Draco sick. If it wasn't one thing it was another, and his frequent trips to madam Pomfrey had her shaking her head in wonder. She couldn't explain his constant coughs and colds and fevers. Of course, Draco knew why he was sick. It was a constant focus of his energies onto Harry, whose energies weren't constantly focussed on him. It was draining, but it was also a sacrifice he was willing to make.

If love had bonded him to any other soul, Draco felt that it would have been wasted, for never before had he been able to help as much as he did without anyone knowing. There would have been no need for him to give himself so completely to anyone but Harry.

And it was all about need, too, wasn't it? Need and want and that strange desperate dragging and driving of time that had been crushing only the tallest of them for a very long time. Now it was bending to reach the smaller, more insignificant being, and there was a need for tall people. Draco had always known that Harry was tall, and with Draco's own added strength he hoped Harry could cast off the shroud that threatened the wizarding world.

One afternoon (the bitter spring kind where the slushy ground soaks your pants up to the knees and the wind blows you so hard and so cold you think your nose and ears are going to freeze and drop off), Draco couldn't find Harry.

Draco looked in Harry's room (discreetly), he looked in the great hall He wandered the hallways and trudged up to the quidditch field. He peered through the smoke-smudged windows of Hagrid's hut and climbed to the highest room in the tallest tower of Hogwarts. He searched all throughout the school, but Harry was nowhere. After waffling between going to Dumbledore or not he decided it was important enough.

Of course it figured that the minute he reached the corridor of the headmaster's office Harry emerged from behind the large stone gargoyle. Harry almost immediately caught his eyes, and the panicked expression within them, and shook his head. Leave it, Harry was saying with his eyes held expressionless and level with Draco's own. Satisfied with Harry's safety Draco retreated, but not before seeing another figure leave the office.

Severus Snape. Come along, Potter. You know the product of your inattention last year, so let's make this as painless as possible.

Painless? What was going on? But Draco did not follow them. Did not try to find out exactly what it was that had shaken Harry so. Instead, he went to his room and lay on his bed and stared at nothing, mind utterly blank.

When Harry found Draco that night he refused to talk about what had happened between himself and Snape. He simply curled into Draco's arms and shook with something akin to shock. Neither spoke that night, choosing to lie still on Draco's bed until morning.

Somewhere between the witching hour and the first light of dawn Draco closed his eyes and focussed on Harry. It could have been minutes or hours or days that he spent gently sending pacifying energy through a small shivering boy, but at dawn Harry raised his head and gently unpeeled Draco's arms from around him while Draco pretended to sleep peacefully.

I know what you're doing, Draco. I'm not the Boy who Lived anymore. Harry murmured, thumb tracing Draco's slack lips. I'm the Boy who Loved.

He left in a whisper of invisibility cloak.

Draco slowly opened his pale eyes and drew in a shaky breath. He felt the burning heat of tears collect behind his eyes and squeezed them shut. And then he rolled over and tried desperately not to give up.