Theme of the day is an absurd overuse of dashes.
Part 2
It wasn't that Draco deliberately tried to run against everything that he used to be before eighteen, he simply acted as though that boy did not exist. He never talked about Draco Malfoy, not out of a wish to hide, but because like a ship whose every plank had been replaced, nothing that used to be true about the boy was true about the man. Maybe it was just growing up, but Draco was the boy who grew up but also never did.
He played piano for a bar; improvised quirky melodies on the out-of-tune grand piano at Grimmauld; drove the Zamboni at an ice rink; and even wrote for a satirical column in a Muggle newspaper for a while. And now with Harry they visited Teddy, and travelled the country (sometimes the world) on their brooms. Harry was no longer lonely. One person made him feel full to the brim.
-o-
They portkeyed to Tibet over a weekend, and ended up spending more time indoors than out nursing their altitude sickness. But when Harry finally flew out into the winds, it was to face boundless stretches of sapphire sky over glistening Himalayas. And just in front of him, back against the sun and shouldering morning clouds the colour of his hair, was Draco. "I love you so much, Draco Malfoy—" Harry unthinkingly groaned through his headache, and Draco's answering laughter was lost in the wind.
Sometimes it striked Harry that Draco had never said the word back, but such was not a thought that entered his head when Draco spun around on his broom, eyes blown wide and beaming, reaching out to Harry with both hands. What more proof could he ask for other than the fingers delicately tracing his chin, lips so tender against his own, and eyes that— almost reverent— drank him in like wine and held to him like the only ground.
And if Harry ever asked, Draco probably would laugh or shrug, say "what's in a word anyway?" in that flippant way of his, while already racing away again with the ghost of a smirk in the air.
Indeed, what's in a word? And if they spent their first six years hurling at each other words they didn't mean, why start honouring them now?
Harry seemed to be the only thing he'd kept from the other life. But he chose Harry, despite him being the reminder of everything (maybe Draco wanted— needed— the reminder), so Harry must be special, right? Someone to stay around, and never run away from?
"Is there anything about us that could never change?" Draco asked, lying beside Harry under a limitless night sky, the ones that make you feel smaller than a speck of dust.
"I don't know. But there's got to be something."
"There's nothing about you and me that's intrinsic. Nothing but pretty clothes we make for ourselves, convincing ourselves of who we are."
"Oh. You don't really think so?" Nothing but make-belief. Apparently.
"Harry, there's nothing that isn't possibly an illusion." He'd said with a sad urgency.
"You are not. We are not." Harry squeezed Draco's hand, intertwined with his, so tightly it must have hurt; but for a long time, Draco was silent as the sky. The dark, beautiful, impenetrable sky, which held no answers in its depths.
-o-
There was one day, when they were walking through a little city park— so delicately and tenderly manicured and cared for, it was so utterly bourgeois that they made fun of it the whole way through. But when he abruptly stopped at a footpath's end, there was tension in his shoulders. Before them was no monster, merely a cluster of flowers embedded into long summer grasses.
He stood still, and a tear rolled down his cheek.
Harry stood there beside him, panicked and transfixed; he couldn't begin to understand— Then he picked them out: lilies and narcissus in quiet bloom. They stood mute among the brighter colours, as though intently watching them.
Harry wrapped him in his arms, and Draco clutched back— so tightly it hurt— face buried in Harry's shoulder. That was the only time Harry had seen him cry. Flowers. It seemed so ridiculous then.
But later he'd told Harry that sometimes he was glad his mother died so he's truly free. Because Narcissa would have seen the two of them and convinced him to stay.
Because Draco, free as he was, would never stop running. "Waiting for the world to forget about him", he'd said that first night. But it seems as though he runs from anyone who tries to remember him.
-o-
Harry will never be forgotten though. There are beckons from that other world, from friends and families, for dinners, pub nights, new years, weddings (which Harry went to without Draco); pleads for donations and appearances at society events or galas. Harry never liked the idea of events, but he always tried to look into the charities.
Whenever Harry talked to Draco about them, however, he would grow silent and turn an unfathomable look towards him. He quietly said Harry should do whatever he thought was right with Draco's money, and that he didn't own dress robes now anyway.
One day an invitation came from the Headmistress of Hogwarts for a guest lecture. It felt like such a revelation, so obviously right that Harry positively beamed as he showed the letter to Draco. Draco looked between the letter and Harry for a long time, before his eyes widened, and twinkled in that way Harry didn't understand. He smiled and drew Harry into a kiss, the same unfathomable note was in his smile, his kiss.
Later when he thought back to the moment, Harry realised that this must have been when Draco knew. The goodbye started far earlier than Harry had thought.
The first time, he was back from Hogwarts the same day by dinner. But he was asked back again. And again. And almost every time he'd stay a little longer. Eventually, he'd be surprised to find himself away for an entire week. And when Harry was back he saw Draco in the kitchen, pouring over their world map full of pins, eyes burning and voice carefully careless. He didn't seem to be looking at Harry at all.
"What do you think about St. Petersburg?"
And if Harry had stopped and thought about it then, he'd have known. But he had just recovered from his surprise with a smile and said "Sure, why not?"
Even then, from the moment they arrived at the Russian city's portkey centre, their joined hands quickly falling, he should have known something was irreparably wrong.
Walking along the Neva, they almost dared not look each other in the eye. Draco talked, laughed loudly, the way he did with any charming young man at a club. And slowly, Harry felt something shrinking away from his chest.
There were palaces and cathedrals, centuries and centuries worth of solemn Apollonian columns lining the riverside, but they seemed to crumble in his mind, altars and crystal chandeliers coated in unerasable dust. Draco's freedom, non-stop wildness, was about everything Harry was trying to look for. Until he wasn't.
No, Draco could never stop running. Harry thought he did— for Harry, but he had just dragged Harry with him into the race to nowhere— a beautiful, splendid journey, to nowhere. And Harry wanted to go home.
Stay tuned for the third and final part! && I'd super appreciate any of your thoughts!
