It's hard to listen to a heart heart heart

Beating close to mine

Pounding up against the stone and steel

Walls that I won't climb

Patty Griffin - "Rain"

Harry sat on his bed with his knees pulled up, head resting in the circle of his arms, body rocking back and forth restlessly.

"They're getting closer, you know," Tom said casually from the end of the bed.

Ironically, despite how fervently Tom wished to be back among the living, he was never able to manifest the way that Harry was. Harry who only ever wanted to disappear. For hours and hours Harry could drift in the timeless aether, but without fail something kept bringing him back to the surface. Women dragging him from room to room of this sterile tomb. They didn't grasp that he had no need for food or water. Every day they asked and every day he told them no.

It was easy to tell who among them were ghosts and who were the wizards working the complicated necromancy bringing him closer and closer to his rebirth.

They weren't his ghosts, though, these phantoms roaming the halls. They didn't stare at him the way he was used to. Most of the time Harry was able to drift past them without them ever seeing him; separated by the veil. These ghosts were closer to the living than he wanted to be, and if he was quiet enough he could haunt the walls without being bothered.

Most of the time.

His neck twitched painfully to the side and Harry hissed.

"You see? Already you can feel again. It won't be long now until we're back."

Harry ignored him the best he could, but he couldn't deny that he was right. The all-consuming numbness of death was still very much there, but it was fading like melting snow. He didn't feel the pang of hunger or the bite of the cold, but he could feel his body becoming more and more corporeal despite how hard he resisted. Muscles long dead twitching and contracting back to life. Harry didn't know how to stop it.

"Don't you miss it, Harry? Don't you miss the sun? The warmth? Don't you miss the power you had?"

So many people died in his name. In his war. So many people, kids like him who died before their time who deserve to go back to their lives so much more than he did. What had life ever given him but an early death? He stared at his trembling hands. "No, I don't."

"The doctor says the… 'hi-peri-den'... should stop the shaking," came a voice that didn't belong to Tom Riddle.

Harry looked up at the tall, pale figure of Draco Malfoy as he sauntered into Harry's room, cloak over one arm.

"You're here," Harry breathed. He had been almost afraid that Draco had already moved on, and yet now he was saddened that he was keeping yet another person tethered to this purgatory. Saddened and yet relieved to have someone other than Tom Riddle there with him. Draco opened his mouth to respond but Tom spoke over him.

"Of course he's here. Even in death he belongs to me."

"Shut up!" Harry snarled toward the other phantom. Draco flinched, eyes glancing briefly toward Tom before quickly moving back to Harry. Draco tried to ignore Tom as best as he could when he was able to come, but Harry suspected that a lifetime of fear didn't go away just because one was dead. Still, Harry did his best to mediate, unwilling to let Tom scare away the one person he actually wanted to see.

"Just ignore him, Harry," Draco advised, moving forward and edging Tom away so Draco could take his spot. Harry felt some of the tension recede as Tom put some distance between them. "Anyway, of course I came. I came by last week, but when I tried to see you, you were already asleep, so I let you be. Sorry it's taken me so long to come back, things have been quite hectic, between clearing out the manor and making that old pile you live in habitable. Good news is I've finally managed to get that awful portrait of Aunt Walburga down. I'd like to've destroyed it but Kreature threw a fit so I told him to put her in his quarters. Bet she'd love that; overseeing naught but an elf nest."

"I wish you could have destroyed it," Harry said coldly, scowling at the thought of that toxic woman poisoning the atmosphere.

"I knew you'd want it down in any case. The house is clean, though. Wallpaper all repaired, I'd really like to just replace all the furniture, to be honest. There's so much at the manor going into storage, or being sent to the Chateau, there'd be plenty to redecorate the townhouse. But we've also got to find a house here in the city. A muggle one, if you can believe it. How we're supposed to go about buying a house from a muggle, I've no idea, but we have to be moved in before we lose the elves come Midsummer, so redecorating Grimmauld place will have to wait."

Harry uncurled himself as Draco rambled, relaxing further as the other boy talked.

Draco would be a better candidate for reanimation than Harry was.

"Come here," Harry interrupted as Draco was judgementally explaining the flats that the ministry had arranged for them which neither he nor Narcissa would deign to live in.

Draco's mouth clicked shut and he gave Harry a piercing look, eyes swimming with the anxiety he'd been trying so hard to play off. Harry scooted closer to the wall, patting the empty space beside him on the narrow cot.

Draco's throat clicked as he swallowed, but he stood and perched carefully next to him on the mattress. Harry tugged his shirt, urging him to lay beside him and Draco sighed, toeing off his expensive leather shoes before laying fully on the bed, curling on his side facing Harry who scooted down until he, too, was laying down. Their heads shared the feather pillow, breath mingling together as they stared silently at one another before Harry closed his eyes and pressed his body into the solid warmth of the other boy, flush from shoulder to thighs, brow pressed to Draco's pale, bony collar bone.

Draco brought an arm around him, hand rubbing circles into his upper back and Harry sighed.

For the first time since he'd died, he felt warm.

"I keep flickering in and out," Harry whispered into the closeness between their bodies. "It's getting harder and harder to stay asleep. I just want to be done with it all. Why won't they just leave me alone? I'm not worth it. I want to stay here with you."

Draco sighed, his warm breath gusting through Harry's unbrushed hair. "I'm not dead, Harry. Much as I'm sure the public wishes I were. But I'll come to visit you as often as I can. I don't want you left alone with him."

"With Tom?" Harry asked, glancing at the dark haired boy leaning casually against the opposite wall behind Draco's back, sneering at the two of them. Harry deliberately looked away. "I can handle him."

Draco shook his head, pressing his face into Harry's thick hair. "I don't know what to do for you," he admitted so quietly Harry almost didn't hear. "I don't know how to make you better."

Harry pushed back a little and looked up into Draco's colourless eyes. "You make me feel better when you're here."

Draco's expression didn't clear. "Where are your friends, anyway?"

Harry shrugged. "Australia. They have their own lives to live. They shouldn't be stuck mourning me."

"And the Weaslette?"

"I don't know. Are you jealous of her?"

"She's still your girlfriend, isn't she?"

Harry smiled kindly, reaching up to cup Draco's warm cheek. "It wasn't Ginny I kissed goodbye."

Draco closed his eyes tight as he exhaled through his nose. Then, opening them again, he ducked his head down and kissed him.

The kiss was gentle but demanding. Possessive as Draco's kisses always were. Harry remembered the year before when Draco had sucked a collar of bruises into his skin that stayed with him for weeks. Harry almost wished they would have scarred.

Too soon, Draco pulled back, forehead pressed to Harry's own. His fingers toyed with the tube taped to his cheek and Harry blinked.

"I'd forgotten about that," he said, pressing his fingers to where it disappeared inside his nose.

"We can't do this," Draco decreed despondently.

Harry's gaze flew back up to Draco's. "What? Why not? I can make Tom fuck off."

Draco just shook his head, sitting up and leaning his head back against the stark white wall. "It's not that. Although that does make me incredibly uncomfortable. No, Harry, you're sick."

"I'm not sick!" he tried to tug Draco back down to him. "Draco, you're being ridiculous. Of course I'm not sick. I can't get sick anymore. Please? It's been so long…"

Draco petted Harry's hair but didn't relent. "I'll tell you what: once you're eating solid food again, we can do whatever you want, I swear it."

Harry paused, willing, for the moment, to play Draco's make-believe game. "Anything I want?"

"Anything."

"You want me to eat food?"

"Every day, indefinitely."

Harry frowned. That was excessive for a game. "Draco…"

"What's wrong? Scared, Potter?"

The brunet scowled as Draco taunted him childishly, but damn it he hadn't backed down from a challenge in seven years and he wasn't about to start now. "Fine. I pretend to eat and you do whatever I want.

"Whatever you want," Draco confirmed, nodding.

Harry sat up on one shoulder and held out his hand, a determined gleam in his eye. Draco kept the eye contact and met Harry's outstretched hand with his own.

"Deal," Harry swore, shaking Draco's long-fingered hand firmly.

Draco darted in and kissed him again. "Deal."