A/N: Just a short sad, sweet songfic. Enjoy.
One-Shot
Time
Harry's POV
I stared down at the results of my lab test. Tears began to come out of my eyes as I wept. I had received the diagnosis in the mail, as I had requested. I sank down to the floor, the letter falling out of my hands.
Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?
I heard the door open. "Harry? I'm home!" Draco called out to me. I tried to say something to indicate where I was, but my throat seemed to be stuck. Draco walked into the living room and saw me sitting on the floor beside the couch. He smiled at me.
"Hey sweets, what's up?" he asked, kissing me on the cheek and sitting down beside me. He frowned. "Harry? Is something wrong?"
He has it too, I thought, staring at my love. Draco took the letter from my hands, his brow furrowing. He read it through, and went from slightly curious to extremely scared. "Oh, god," he said, going white. "How long have you known?"
"I just found out," I said, my voice flat and dead. "I began suspecting something when it took me three weeks to recover from the cold. I went and got my blood tested and asked them to mail the results to me. They're absolutely positive. The doctors did both kinds of tests. I have AIDs. You probably do too. We never had protected sex, did we?"
Draco shook his head, staring at me. "I never thought we needed to. I thought... aren't I your first?"
I nodded. "Yes, you are." I racked my brain, trying to figure out where I could have gotten this from. Then I remembered. "Ron and I decided to become blood brothers right before our weddings. Right before I married you," I said, smiling and admiring the identical gold wedding bands on our fingers. "We decided that since he was going to be my best man and I was going to be his we should become brothers. We both made a cut on our hands," I said, tracing the scar there. "And then we mingled the blood. I must have gotten it from him. That means Hermione probably has it too, and maybe even her unborn child. God, this is horrible. I never should have...." I began, but couldn't finish. I had ruined both our lives.
"No," Draco said forcefully, wrapping his arms around me in a strong embrace. "This is not your fault. How could you have known? It's okay Harry, shh," he said, stroking my hair and holding me tightly. I cried into his chest, cried for the life I had lost, the life he had lost, the lives our friends had lost, but most of all, I cried for us. I cried for the fact that we would never have the lives that we had dreamed of. We would never get to have children, or raise them. Never get to go to all the places we had wanted to go. Never get to grow old together, and love each other to the end of eternity. Draco rocked me back and forth, rubbing my back and whispering soothing words into my ears. I used to think we had all the time in the world to do these things, and now...now time was everything, and nothing. It was the one thing we didn't have enough of, but used to think was irrelevant. Death was not something I needed to think bout before; it was long in the future, something to be thought about later, not now, when we were so young.
What would our friends and family think? Lucius would say that it was our fault because we were gay; that we'd had it coming to us. Lucius had always hated the fact that his son was gay, and had cursed both Draco and I. Would we get fired from our jobs? Would we lose the respect of our colleagues?
Will I lose my dignity?
Will someone care?
Will I wake tomorrow from this nightmare?
All I wanted was to wake up in the arms of my love and find this all to be a horrid dream. To tell Draco about my dream and have him laugh softly at my foolishness. To tell me none of it was true, and that we would get to grow old together. I was still in his arms, but it wasn't a dream, and I wasn't going to wake up. Since I wasn't, all I wanted was for this moment to last forever. I never wanted to move from where I was. I had everything I needed right here.
There is no future
There is no past
Thank god this moment's not the last
Draco stood up, pulling me with him. "Come on," he said forcefully. "I know what you're thinking. You think that our lives are over, and that we'll never get to do anything."
I avoided his eyes and muttered, "How did you know?"
He smiled at me. "Because I know you. You love to assume the worst. Stop it. We have enough money saved so that we can go on a very long vacation, and do all the things we were planning on doing. Don't despair just yet, Harry," he said, and caught me in a loving kiss. I kissed back, hard, needing, anxious to feel his lips against mine, to know that I was still alive, that he was alive. His fingers raked my hair, and he wrapped his arm around my waist, pulling me closer to him. He then broke the kiss and I let out a little whine of protest, but he smiled and whispered in my ear, "Lets not waste the little bit of life we have left. Pack your suitcase; we're going to Paris."
My eyes widened. "Really?" I gasped.
He nodded, smiling. "Yes. While you're all ready to throw our lives away, I'm not. I want to enjoy these last few years. Go!" He exclaimed. "Let's not waste anymore time."
There's only us
There's only this
Forget
Regret
Or life is yours to miss
No other road
No other way
No day but today.
I can't control
My destiny
I trust my soul,
My only goal is just to be
Two years later
Draco's POV
"How is he?" I asked nervously.
Healer Hernandez sighed. "I'm afraid he isn't doing very well. He caught pneumonia, and his system is fighting the disease, but I don't think he'll make it."
"And you can't fix it?!" I exploded, standing up and knocking my chair over.
"Mr. Potter-Malfoy, calm down. Yelling will not bring your husband back from the brink of death," the Healer told me sternly.
"You bring people back from the brink of death all the time; don't tell me that you can't!"
"The reason we can do that is because the patient's systems are already strong. Your husband's system has been greatly weakened by Aids. If you had brought him to us sooner we could have magically located the virus and taken it out, like we were able to do with you. However, Harry's system has been completely taken over. If I were to try and destroy the virus now it would also destroy Harry."
My shoulders drooped, and I was on the verge of breaking down. "How long does he have left?" I asked weakly.
Healer Hernandez bit her lip and looked away from me.
"How long?" I asked again, beginning to get angry.
She sighed and said, "A few days, at most. At worst he has a few hours left. I'm sorry, Mr. Potter-Malfoy."
"Just Potter," I said softly.
She nodded. "I understand. Would you like to stay with him?"
"Of course."
"This way," she told me, and led me to the room at the far end of the hall. We entered, and I almost broke down then and there. Harry looked so miserable, hooked up to all those magical machines. He looked so pale, nothing like the shining boy I had once known.
"Hey," I said softly, sinking into the chair beside his bed.
He looked up at me, and said, with a faint grin on his face, "You don't have to use that soft voice with me. You're treating me like I'm on my death bed or something." He coughed weakly.
I laughed at this, while tears began streaming out of my eyes. "I'm so sorry," I sobbed. "It's all my fault. If I hadn't dragged you off to all those exquisite locations and had gotten you here instead you wouldn't be dying."
"No, no don't be like that. It's not your fault, none of this is. It's nobody's fault. At least we could warn Ron and Hermione and baby Jesse. They were saved, and you were too. That's all that matters to me," Harry said in a pleading voice, begging me not to cry.
"I'm sorry," I said, straightening up and wiping my eyes fiercely with the back of my hand. "All you need is for me to be here with you in these last...just to be here."
"How long do I have left?" he asked, and I felt slightly amused that his question was the almost the same as mine.
"Oh, I dunno," I said, avoiding his eyes and evading the question.
"Tell me," Harry said firmly. "I can handle it."
Unwillingly, I looked up into his eyes, and I knew I couldn't lie. "A few days, at best."
"And at worst?" Harry asked in a slightly fearful voice.
"I...uh...I'm sorry Harry, but she said a few hours." I stammered, horrified at what was coming out of my mouth.
Harry inhaled sharply, and then his breath rate increased swiftly. "Is there anything I can do?" I asked him.
He shook his head frantically. "No, just stay."
I nodded, and grabbing his hand, I squeezed it tightly, hoping to comfort him somewhat. He squeezed back weakly. He looked up at me and said mellifluously, A/N: Whoa, big word there. ;-) "Draco, I'm afraid. I don't want to die. I mean, I thought I was going to die when I battled Voldemort for the last time. I was prepared then. I had no real reason to live back then. The only people I had were my friends, and I thought that they had died by the time I was facing Voldemort. Now I have every reason to want to live. I have you, my friends, and a whole life and a beautiful world to look forward to." He smiled bitterly. "It's as though the world decided to play a cruel trick on me. I don't die when I have nothing. Instead, death waits until I have everything I ever wanted, and then it decides to swoop in upon me, like a huge black bat coming to devour its pray when it is least suspecting. And if that isn't heartless enough, it also happens to be partly my fault that I'm dying." Harry sighed. "Maybe I'm better off dead."
"No," I said forcefully. "Don't ever say that. You are everything to me. To have you die is to have my whole heart ripped out and shred to pieces. I love you more than anything I could have ever loved before."
"I love you too, my sweet blonde angel. I'm glad that I will die with you by my side," Harry responded, gazing at me through teary eyes.
I leaned in and gave him a chaste kiss on his lips. My tongue gently pushed at his lips, begging for entrance. He complied, opening his mouth just enough to allow me to deepen the kiss. We stayed that way, kissing hard, for I think that we both knew, somehow, that it would be our last kiss, and we didn't want it to end. A few minutes later, we both broke the kiss at the same time. He smiled at me, looking tired. "I need some sleep, angel," he said, reaching up and running his fingers through my hair. "Goodnight, my love."
"Goodnight," I said sweetly, trying to be strong in Harry's final few moments, because I knew that when Harry closed his eyes, they wouldn't open again. "I love you. You have been the light of my life."
Harry smiled up at me again, and through his eyes I could see, faintly, the sweet little boy that I had once known, had once teased, and had always loved. His eyes then closed, never to open again.
I came home alone after the funeral. Hermione and Ron had offered to come with me, but I had refused. I think Hermione knew what I was going to do, but when I told her I wanted to be alone, she didn't argue with me.
My footsteps echoed eerily in the empty house, which was once filled with light, warmth, and Harry.
Without you
The ground thaws
The rains falls
The grass grows
I took off my coat, and set an envelope on the coffee table. A letter that was meant for Hermione. I then took out my dagger and walked into my bedroom. I lit several candles and lay down on our...my bed. I quickly made a swipe down both wrists and proceeded to lie there, spread eagle, bleeding to death.
Without you
The seeds root
The flowers bloom
The children play
The stars gleam
The poets dream
But I die
Without you
The world revives
Colors renew
But I know blue
Only blue
Lonely blue
Within me
Blue
Without you
Without you
The eyes gaze
The legs walk
The lungs breathe
The mind churns
The heart yearns
The tears dry
Without you
Life goes on
But I'm gone
Cause I die
Without you
Without you
Without you
Hermione's POV
"Come on Ron," I shouted, dragging him behind me as we ran into Draco's apartment. However, we were too late. I saw Draco's body lying there, blood surrounding it, and I knew that there was no way we could bring him back.
"Oh, god," Ron said, looking sick.
I, in spite of this, was not paying attention to Draco's body. I was more interested in an envelope on the coffee table that had my name on it. I walked over and picked it up. I opened it, and out fell a letter and a picture. The letter said:
Dearest Hermione,
If you are reading this, it means that I have gone through with my plan and am no longer in the realm of the living. And if I know you, you probably tried to stop me. I am sorry, but you know better than I the love I had for Harry. Without him, I have no real reason to go on. Life is nothing to me without him. I feel empty, detached, as though there's nothing left inside. So I must leave this world to join Harry, my love. I love you too, and Ron, and I hope you have a happy life together.
Yours truly,
Draco Malfoy
I read this through twice, and tears dripped out of my eyes onto the paper. I understood why he had done it, but I wished he hadn't. I had loved him dearly, for he had been one of my greatest friends.
I picked up the letter from the table. It was from Harry and Draco's wedding day. It was a picture of all four of us after the ceremony. I was Maid of Honor and Ron was Best Man. We were all leaning in a smiling happily. That had been a wonderful day, and now...now both Harry and Draco were dead. I touched my stomach, where two twin boys were growing, and I knew what their names would be.
"Farewell, Draco and Harry," I said softly to the falling night.
A/N: What did you think? Tell me, I'm dying here! Oh yeah, and the songs were from a musical called Rent that I'm singing in my choir. Bye!
-CatJetRat