Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.
Author: Penguin
LANDSCAPE WITHOUT FIGURESHarry closed the door behind him, slowly walked to the middle of the floor and curiously looked around the room. So this was where Draco Malfoy had stayed. This small apartment was his last known abode before he had simply disappeared. The exterior of the building was beautiful, and this room spacious and well proportioned with gracefully arched windows and stuccoed ceiling. French windows opened onto a small balcony.
Harry looked around and tried to imagine Draco Malfoy's feelings when Malfoy Manor had been appropriated. He wondered if Malfoy knew the Manor was currently being converted into a school.
The furniture was sparse but select - a carved oak desk and chair, a white Italian settee and armchair with a low, heavy table in front, and a brocade-curtained four-poster bed. The window drapes were made of some soft, pliant material with a heavy fall, reminiscent of silk, and the few Oriental rugs on the honey-coloured wood floor were exquisite in colour, pattern and workmanship. There were few ornaments, some lamps and candelabra, but nothing very personal, nothing to tell a visitor what kind of person Draco Malfoy was. Or had been.
Harry looked into the kitchen, which was tiled and spotlessly clean, with oak cabinets and a small table and two chairs in front of the window. The bathroom was equally small, tiled, spotless and impersonal; a towel slung over the edge of the bathtub the only evidence that it had ever been used.
Harry went back to the single, large room and wondered what it was about it that made a chill crawl down his spine. Despite the graceful proportions and the beautiful things in the room, the impression was not one of beauty. It was emptiness, coldness, absence... something essential missing. Substance. A core.
He wasn't sure what made him decide to stay the night. He had no idea what he hoped to find, if anything – he only had this feeling of a presence that was no longer there but could perhaps be recalled.
It was very strange to stay in Draco Malfoy's apartment, among his belongings; as if he, Harry, was trying to be someone else, attempting to live someone else's life. Touching glasses and cutlery in the kitchen, and opening the hangings around the bed, felt very private and forbidden. Like touching Malfoy himself.
Harry took a shower in the tiled, glass-doored shower stall, dried himself on a thick, soft blue towel he found in a cupboard and then brushed his teeth, standing naked in front of Draco Malfoy's large bathroom mirror. He watched himself get an erection while a tiny white river of toothpaste foam escaped from the corner of his mouth and slowly dribbled down his chin. He rinsed his mouth, closed his wet hand around his cock and shut his eyes. When he opened them again, it was to see his own thick, white come slowly slide down the gleaming surface of the mirror and drip onto the floor. The dull echo of his moans still reverberated in the tiled room.
The linen sheets in the four-poster were clean, as if they had been waiting for him. He slid down between them and slept under the eiderdown in Draco Malfoy's bed; his dreams alternately empty and full of mist.
xxx
Next morning, sunlight crept slowly over the bed and woke him. He knew at once what made the room feel so lifeless and vacant, as if his dreams had given him the answer: the paintings, drawings and etchings on the walls, fine as they were, all depicted empty landscapes without human beings in them, without living creatures at all. Some of the landscapes looked as if they had once had figures in them, but at some point and for some reason had been vacated. There was a strange silence in the room, too; not a sound penetrated from the outside world.
Harry spent the day looking through cupboards, cabinets and drawers, and found nothing that could tell him anything about their owner, the former occupant of the flat.
In the evening, he undressed in front of the bathroom mirror and inspected his erection. His cock was dark red and swollen and he traced a vein with his fingertip; one hand cupped his testicles as the other slipped into its familiar rhythm. It was all a repeat of yesterday; semen on the mirror and the flat echo of his moans. He licked his hand and tasted his own bitter saltiness. At least he was alive.
Smooth linen caressed him; eiderdown warmed him. He was hard again, and half asleep he moved convulsively and stained Draco Malfoy's sheets.
In his dreams that night, he was still in the room. The curtains began to billow although windows and doors were closed, and vague figures of men and creatures came wandering back into the pictures on the walls. They settled in poses or continued to move around; cows lowed, cats meowled, men talked to each other in mumbling voices where no words could be distinguished.
xxx
When Harry masturbated in the bathroom the next evening, he had the odd sensation that the hand around his cock was not his own. He stopped moving his hand, but there was still pressure and rhythmic movement, and he came with a frightened gasp, once again spattering the mirror with semen.
He slept and dreamt, and the figures came wandering back into the pictures on the walls. Maids milked cows into slopping buckets, children laughed and old men smoked their pipes. Draco Malfoy sauntered into the largest painting, sat down on the grass and crossed his legs. The smile on his face did not reach his eyes. Harry tried to talk to him but had no voice, and Malfoy was silent. After a while he got up from the grass, stretched out a hand to the autumnal, red creepers framing the picture and picked a few leaves. He scattered them across the lawn where they glowed like drops of fresh blood against the grass, and silently left the painting.
In the morning, Harry found a bright red leaf on the floor. He picked it up, and it crumbled in his hand.
xxx
On the fourth day, Harry noticed he was fading. The contours of his head and body looked blurred in the mirror, and when he stretched out a hand to pick up his toothbrush, he could see it faintly outlined through his hand.
He lifted his gaze to the mirror again and thought he saw a ghost-like figure behind him, but when he turned around, there was nothing but air.
He undressed and looked at his naked, blurry-edged body in the mirror. His cock was limp and uncooperative and did not get hard until he had gone to bed. He fell asleep on sticky, wet stains; the image of Draco Malfoy's face dancing before his eyes.
xxx
The figures came wandering back into the paintings and drawings but did not stay there. They quickly peopled the room in alarming numbers, talking and moving around. Harry knew he was asleep and dreaming but moved out of the bed, naked, and suddenly stood facing Draco Malfoy. The smile on Malfoy's face still did not reach his eyes.
They went into the bathroom in silence and stood side by side in front of the mirror. Harry could see the tiled wall behind him through his body. Malfoy was naked, too, and similarly translucent. He stretched out his hand and took Harry's. They both had erections now, but they didn't turn to look at each other. Their eyes only met in the mirror.
After a few minutes of silence, Malfoy smiled again and took a step sideways, towards Harry, into him.
Harry watched the images of the two young men in the mirror melt into one - faces, arms, hands, genitals, legs merging into one person, one figure superimposed on the other - and then vanish.
xxx
When the Aurors stormed the apartment, they found it empty and quiet. There were dirty dishes in the sink and two used towels in the bathroom. The bedlinen was creased and semen stained; the large bathroom mirror similarly stained. There was dried foam on the bar of soap in the shower stall.
The Aurors left.
As the door to the big room closed behind them, a leaf was shaken loose from the creepers in the largest painting. It danced slowly to the floor where it came to rest and glowed like a bright drop of blood on the honey-coloured wood. The two figures in the painting, cross-legged on the grass, did not move.