CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

[Paralyzed]

DRACO

Draco's hot breath turned heavy underneath the cloak as he tapped his foot impatiently on the cool stone floor. He hated feeling nervous, it felt like a weakness someone could jab any moment with a knife. Yet still, the jittery feelings were so demanding on being felt. He wished he could just take them, put them in a box, and throw them into a harbor somewhere where he'll never have to face them again.

He looked terrible and felt worse too. Dark circles were digging under his eyes, his skin felt clammy, and his hair was an absolute mess. He hadn't even shown up to any of his classes that day against Blaise's judgment. No, it was Harry's words from the previous night that had him dangling off the edge all day.

'No, you're just a coward.'

It was tearing him to pieces. He wanted it to be wrong so badly, but he simply could not deny the stone-cold truth embedded into Harry's disappointment. He was. He was one and he hated himself for it so much. Draco didn't want to be like his father, he would rather cut off his own wand hand before he raised his wand to torture an innocent person, his own flesh and blood even, just to save his own skin. But it was happening before his very own eyes and he was doing nothing to stop it because he was afraid of all things. It was pathetic.

He barely had worked up the courage to message Harry to meet him here tonight. For some reason it felt like coming clean to Harry would prove something to himself. Maybe it was him trying to prove he wasn't a coward like his father. If that was it didn't help improve his self-esteem very much as was eternally trembling at the thought. He'd thought about ditching multiple times already and it took his entire willpower to ignore the urge. If he wasn't a coward this entire thing wouldn't be so hard.

Finally, he hears the clicking of shoes against the tile. He looks up hopefully to see it was Harry. The tension in his chest loosened just a little.

Harry was still wearing his pyjamas Draco realized as he got a little closer. There were gold and red stripes with a Gryffindor crest on the pocket. Tiny snitches flew around on them as well. Draco figured they were hospital wing issued, still, he couldn't help the amusement that filled him despite his dread.

"Don't you dare laugh," Harry said as he got close enough and Draco had slipped the cloak off.

"I wasn't."

"You were, shut up."

Harry looked around the abandoned hallway then back to Draco who was watching him intensely. He was trying to pick up the courage to do something but every time his body refused. It was beyond frustrating.

"Well?" The brunet finally asks.

"Well, what?" Draco's heart beats a little bit faster.

"Are you going to explain why we're in the middle of the hallway for no reason? Do you want us to get caught or something? I barely got pass Mrs. Norris on the way here."

Draco blinked rather blankly. "Oh. Yes. Hold on."

He hands the invisibility cloak back to Harry before pushing aside the sleeping tapestry of Sir Elwin. The man was rather a snitch so Draco was glad he didn't wake easily when the fabric rippled. He found the loose brick easily and pulled it out. The Hogwarts walls gave a faint hum as the rest of the wall moved apart slowly, brick by brick, until a small stone archway appeared before.

He glanced back to catch Harry's reaction. The boy was awed with his mouth hanging open slightly. "I love Hogwarts."

Draco almost smiled.

The trek to the top of the tower was in relative silence other than Draco telling Harry where to watch his step for magical boobytraps he'd set years prior. He pushed open the trapdoor above him pulled himself up, offering a hand to the boy behind him. Harry's face was one of pure joy taking in the small, circler room. He took in the glass walls and ceiling opening up to the night sky and the granite pillars supporting it. The view of the stars tonight was nearly perfect, there wasn't a cloud in sight and Harry was staring at it like a child on Christmas. There was something about the child-like innocence on his face that stopped Draco completely. It was like he was paralyzed. He couldn't pull himself to look away. The way the boy's eyes were wide, how the crook of his lips turned into a reminiscent of a smile, how the moonlight caught his tan skin. The features weren't necessarily loud but called out to him in a soft, delicate way that he would have missed entirely had it not been for the fragile moment.

"You play all of these?"

The moment faded away all too quickly for Draco's liking as he realized Harry was speaking to him. He was gesturing to the corner of instruments he'd dragged up here. There was his piano, violin, and muggle acoustic guitar and on them and on the floor were dozens of scattered pieces of sheet music he still hasn't bothered to pick up yet. He hadn't played any of them since that one night when Harry had caught him at the house in Colmar. He sunk in on himself when he remembered his fit at the end of his last year which had caused the whole area to be a mess in the first place. He'd torn almost half of his music to pieces and threw everything about. At the time he'd hated the connection it gave him to his family when his mother taught him to play piano and his father forced him into violin lessons. Maybe he still did.

"Yes," Draco says quietly, "I do."

Harry touches the nob of the violin and looks up at Draco. He must have looked troubled because Harry crooks his head in question. "You look terrible."

Draco lets out a pitiful laugh as he sits down on one of the divan's to stop his shaking legs. It only makes his start bouncing. "You're finally right about something."

Harry's face turns into a frown. Draco's reaction must have not been what he was expecting.

Draco takes in a deep breath. The rattling in his chest threatened to stop the words coming out completely yet he soldiered on. "We need to talk."

Harry stopped what he was doing and made his way over to the divan covered in blankets and sat across from him. He sat cross-legged with his full attention on Draco except for one of the loose threads of the comforters he was playing with between his fingers. "Okay."

No matter how hard he tries he can't get the words out. Instead, he watches as Harry's chest rises periodically in time with his breathing as he realizes what exactly he's pulled himself into. "I'm…"

Harry stares right back at him intensely with worry and questioning. "Well?"

"...sorry. I'm sorry." The words are cardboard going down his throat and stones in his stomach. It's not like he hasn't ever apologized before. The words shouldn't feel so foreign in his mouth. Maybe it's the fact he'd never put so much meaning into them, or never been for something he feels so deeply for. His grief for his actions was tied in so deeply of the interworking of who he was it felt like he was losing such a huge part of him in finally letting it go.

Harry doesn't ask what for - he already knows. He doesn't say anything though, he just keeps silent in a silent plea for Draco to continue.

"I- don't want to be like him." His voice is shaky from the effort to keep himself together. His eyes were burning and his chest felt heavy as if it were filled with lead. "I... hate him."

The words were heavy in his chest. He'd never truly said the words out loud other than that night at the inn. The hatred had taken root into him and spread like a disease making it to impossible to tell where his fathers started and his began. They both sprouted from the same seed. He hated himself for feeling that way.

His thinking only made the shaking in his hands worse. Embarrassed, he tried to interlock them to steady himself. The urge to cry felt so entirely shameful, almost like the end of the world. Another reason he hated his family. 'Malfoy's don't cry.'

Suddenly there was a hand on his wrist. He looked up at met Harry's dark green eyes. "And you aren't." Draco shook his head, about to deny it when Harry's grip tighten. "No, listen to me Draco. You aren't your father. And you denying it right now? That just proves it. Your father doesn't know what he's doing is wrong and you do. You don't want to do it. Don't confuse the two."

As much as he tried to hold it in, the pain came out like an uproar from his throat in the form of a silent scream. The muffled sobs wracked against his chest. He held a hand against his mouth to try to muzzle it but it was pointless.

He had to do this. He couldn't quit now.

"I don't want to continue like this, but I can't stop. I want it to but I can't. Or maybe I can and I'm just too much of a coward like you said." Draco tears his wrist away and uses his sleeve to wipe his nose which he internal cringes at. "I just keep going and going, driving myself deeper and deeper into a hole I can't climb out of."

"Draco-"

"But like I said last night, not everyone is like you. We can't just be stupidly brave, standing up for what we believe in. It's harder for us and I don't think you realize. You keep saying you think I'm a different person than who you thought I was. Well, you're wrong. I'm the same person whos done all these horrible things and you can't forget that. I can't change."

"Draco-"

"I'm a coward. I'm just scared, and I can't do anything about it. I'll keep walking along this path that's been carved into the ground for ages before I was born because I can't make my own path. I'll become my father and I'll hate myself for it."

"Draco." He looks up. Harry looks almost scared. "If I lived by your standard of bravery, I'll be no better than Voldemort right now. You don't like the fact you're scared? Fear is normal, it's human. It means you're on the right path. If you weren't I'll be scared for you. It means you wouldn't care about yourself or others. You have to be scared to be brave, otherwise, you wouldn't have anything to go up against. That's what bravery is. Going up against something despite being scared. You just need to take the next step."

He refused to look away, even as his ears rung and his shoulders heaved with emotion, unwilling to back down. His dark lashes brimmed heavy with the fight to keep back the pool gathering in his eyes; his hands clenched into shaking fists, in a desperate battle against the grief. He didn't want to cry. He doesn't even remember the last time he did other than the night he got his mark, and Merlin knows when he did it in front of somebody.

"But I can't."

Harry shook his head. "No, you can. You're already doing it right now. You told me this despite the fact you were scared. See? Baby steps. No one does things perfectly off the bat."

Draco rubs his nose then looks down at his hands. "Baby steps shouldn't be so hard. Especially something that should come naturally."

"No one said they weren't. And like you said yourself, not everyone is the same. It's easier for some people than it is for others. I know you can do it just don't hold yourself to impossible standards, Draco."

Brick by brick, his walls came tumbling down. He just broke down. He never learned to cry with style, silently, the pearl-shaped tears rolling down his cheeks from wide luminous eyes, as on the covers of romance novels, without blotchiness or streaks. He wished he had; then he might have been able to do it in front of Harry without feeling so horrible.

Harry pulls him into a hug which Draco doesn't have enough headspace to refuse. He sobbed into his chest unceasingly, hands clutching at Harry's stupid pyjama shirt. It only makes him realize he's never had someone to cry on. Not like this. And for some reason, it's not as bad with him as he would have imagined.

"I don't want to be like him," Draco whispers again into Harry's shoulder once the largest wave of it is gone. "I don't. I can't."

"And you aren't."

Quietly, Draco closes his eyes and takes a shuttering breath. He didn't have the energy to argue. He felt empty without the weight of his fears inside him and he didn't know whether he liked it or not yet.

Draco realizes their position but finds he doesn't really care. Likely because he was exhausted. He just wanted to savor the warmth Harry emitted. The brunet apparently was thinking the same thing because he didn't shift away as Draco wrapped his thin arms around him.

Slowly, Draco opened his eyes and looked upwards. The moon under siege by stars seemed to lighten the night bringing forth stars that shone and hung in the blackness. The never-ending blackness consumed everything. They illuminated the darkness and his fears crumbled to dust beneath his feet. The words, the lies, the hatred, the failures - they now lingered at a distance. No longer did he stand in the shadow of the past. Instead, he would march forward in hope of reaching the stars one day.